GTA IV Delayed!

Friday 3rd August 2007 - 11:00

October release pushed back to April 2008, Grand Turismo 5 could have 1,000 cars and Mercenaries 2: World in Flames screens

It's the news that nobody wanted to hear. But according to early reports, GTA IV, the most hotly anticipated Rockstar title since the last GTA game, has been pushed back to at least April 2008.

The news was broken in a conference call between market analysts and Rockstar's publisher Take Two Interactive. The news wasn't even about GTA IV- and instead about the financial results posted by one of the world's largest publishers. But during the conference call the details slipped out that GTA IV was going to be held back until sometime during the publisher's second fiscal Quarter 2008 - which ends next April. There was no specific reason given for the delay rather than the company needing " additional development time required to complete the title."

CEO Ben Feder added in a statement, "Obviously, we are very disappointed to reduce guidance after having previously reaffirmed it. Other than a matter of timing, the movement of Grand Theft Auto IV does not compromise Take-Two in any way. We are in sound financial condition and have a great product line up." That's good to know. Now give us our GTA IV this instant!

Meanwhile, there's better news if you're interested in other big games with the initials GT. It has been widely reported that every petrol-heads dream racing franchise Gran Turismo is set to boast a whopping 1,0000 cars in the forthcoming PS3-exclusive GT 5. There's apparently only going to be 300 on the disc, with the remaining 700 available to download from the PlayStation Network. There's no official word from Sony to confirm this yet, but in the case of this story at least, we think there's no smoke without fire.

And speaking of fire we turn our attention finally to some brand new screens from Mercenaries 2: World in Flames, forthcoming from EA on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. No word on an official release date yet, but if it's as rock hard as the first outing we'll need all the time in the world to practice.

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