Rockstar San Diego has unveiled a new trailer for the upcoming Midnight Club: Los Angeles. You know, Midnight Club? That racing series that seems to fill in the gaps between new Burnout and Gran Turismo titles? As the title suggests, this new entry will take place in Los Angeles, and will have you running from the cops as you take part in illegal street races. The game is set to be released on October 4th.

Earlier this week, Electronic Arts once again extended its offer to acquire Take-Two, this time until August 18 at 11:59PM Eastern time. In other words, you can expect to see another extension around August 19 at about 9AM.

Already three deadlines have come and gone with no sign of Take-Two or EA budging. According to EA, only about 15% of Take-Two’s shares have been tendered as part of the offer, as of July 18, a fact which Take-Two must be quite pleased with.

The AP reports that Take-Two chairman Strauss Zelnick has offered a statement, saying, “Take-Two’s Board continues to be 100% committed to maximizing stockholder value and remains unanimous in continuing to recommend that our stockholders not tender their shares to EA.”

He continued, “We are fully engaged in a formal process to evaluate strategic alternatives that have the potential to deliver greater value than EA’s inadequate offer. As part of this process, we continue to engage in meaningful discussions with multiple parties, a number of whom have been conducting due diligence. We also remain absolutely focused on executing on our strategic and business objectives.”

By now, you would think EA would just pony up the extra money to convince Take-Two to sell. It’s quite clear that this offer isn’t sufficient and that these deadlines have accomplished nothing.

via videogaming247

Analysts have been throwing their two-cents into the wind since EA decided to pursue Take-Two seven months ago, so it is no surprise that Janco Partners’ Mike Hickey would have to have his say in the matter as well. He feels that Activision Blizzard might be considering making a move on Take-Two themselves.

Speaking to the The Deal.com, Hickey explained:

“We absolutely believe Activision will take a look at Take-Two. If a competitor is for sale, you take a look, and if EA is your real rival, why wouldn’t you stir the pot a little bit?”

UBS Securities’ Ben Schachter though, feels that Activision Blizzard is too busy at the moment to consider further acquisitions since they only finalized their merger yesterday and have loads of work stacked on their plates to content with for the time being.

With Electronic Arts still pursuing Take-Two and extending their offer until August 21, it is highly likely that EA will eventually – but unfortunately – acquire the company. If indeed Take-Two were to be bought by a massive publishing/development conglomerate, it would be in the gaming industry’s best interest if Activision Blizzard were to purchase them instead. EA is basically nothing more than a conqueror riding in on horseback to rape and pillage anything of value and then force their heavy hand upon the survivors.

Via: GI.biz

Rockstar today announced a new release date for the fourth installment of its Midnight Club franchise, Midnight Club: Los Angeles -  October 7th in North America and October 10th in Europe. Rockstar has created a rendition of Los Angeles to race through at break neck speeds and explore at your own pace wth no tracks and no load times for both the PS3 and Xbox 360.

Also scheduled for release simultaneously is Midnight Club: LA Remix for the PSP .

For more screens of Midnight Club: Los Angeles, click here.

Via: Press Release

Recently, Rockstar sent some interesting swag to Popular Mechanics to kick off their holiday sales push. This awesomely shocking bit of swag is none other than a tongue in cheek metal baseball bat complete with the GTA IV logo.

Popular Mechanics writes:

Because they couldn’t legally send us an Uzi thorough the mail, [Rockstar] sent us the 14th most deadly weapon in the blockbuster game’s new arsenal: a metal bat… It just arrived with a press release informing us “‘Tis the Season To Swing Big and Go GRAND,” promoting GTA IV as a perfect stocking-stuffer for the Christmas season.

But who needs the game when you’ve got the bat? In the spirit of giving, we can now give a GTA-style beat-down to random strangers on the street, just like our favorite Eastern European criminal thug, Niko Bellic. And when the cops catch us, we can say that we never would have done it were it not for the influence of violent video games. And for the first time, we’d be right!

Oh, Rockstar, you are just asking for it. As much as I enjoy your shenanigans and your games, this time, I think the backlash will be much more interesting that usual. While I am all for pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable behavior in society and what is frowned upon, this is just a little too extreme. Hilarious, but too extreme considering all the crap that our favorite numbskull JT has caused, one would think that the controversy surrounding the GTA IV release would be enough. I guess not, but more power to them. They have enough money to quell the backlash should something unsavory arise due to the baseball bat stunt.

That being said, what the hell do I have to do to get one, Rockstar?

Via: GamePolitics

The 2,676 people who filed claims against Rockstar in the “Hot Coffee” class action lawsuit will be splitting a monetary settlement of less than $30,000, according to the New York Times.

The contents of the settlement which Jonathan reported yesterday, stated that the customers who were offended by the sexual mini-game in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas would be granted anywhere from $5 to $35 each, or a revised edition of the game. Those who were “offended” had to enter a certain code to even get to the content, so if they did it was their own fault in the first place if they were offended.

Take-Two stated that the claims amount to less than $30,000 but unfortunately the company spent $1.3 million in legal fees. Add to this the $860,000 charitable donation the company agreed to and you get a bill totaling $2.19 million plus the production cost of the altered game and the distribution of it.

However, there is still the possibility, although small, that the civil lawsuit can still go to trial. The  settlement will go before Manhattan’s Federal District Court for final approval next Wednesday, so keep your eyes peeled for more details.

Via: New York Times

Some people might say that walking around Liberty City is a boring affair. While I wouldn’t go that far, it would be nice if you had access to the game’s excellent selection of radio stations while on foot — it would make wandering the back alleys while looking for those blasted flying rats a bit more enjoyable. That’s been a feature I’ve wanted since the third Grand Theft Auto rocked the scene. Rockstar had the feature implemented in GTA IV until fairly late in the game’s development cycle before it was yanked, MTV Multiplayer learned last week.

“Some people on the team didn’t like the music/mobile phone idea for various reasons, but they went back and forth on the idea until the very end,” Rockstar spokesperson Darlan Monterisi explained. “This is VERY common. We do it in every game we make. We still prefer the balance of music in car and the ambient world’s noise on foot, but we are constantly reviewing this stuff.”

From the sound of what he’s saying, it seems like Rockstar would consider releasing a music player through an update if there was enough interest in it. I don’t quite understand the decision to completely omit the feature; why not just give players the option to listen to the radio while on foot, even if it isn’t by default? Hopefully they keep “reviewing” this and decide to amend their decision. (And it better be free.)

The next time you boot up GTA IV for either the Xbox 360 or PS3, you should be prompted to download a new, helpful patch from Rockstar. The new patch essentially offers a number of changes and fixes that should improve the overall experience for everyone. Some of them are minor changes like more frequent leaderboard updates, while others are major fixes like eliminating game-crashing bugs. You can check out the full list of fixes below:

• Fixed an issue where players were unable to enter or exit vehicles in GTA Race.
• Fixed an issue where scripted vehicles were causing games to unexpectedly crash.
• Improved reliability and frequency of PS3™ online leaderboard updates.
• Fixed a rare hang some players encountered when moving from a Race or GTA Race lobby into gameplay.
• Fixed a hang that would occur when players were switching teams during the countdown in the lobby.
• Fixed an issue where players were able to get ridiculously high scores from Cops ‘n Crooks matches.
• Changed GTA Race and Race so that the last player remaining always receives a reward of $250.
• Fixed an issue where spectating players would prevent the game from finishing.
• Fixed an issue where players were unable to spectate in Round 2 of Cops ‘n Crooks games.
• Changed countdown timer in lobby so that it no longer resets when new players join a game.
• Changed the kick option so that kicked players are no longer brought back to single player.\

Via Rockstar Social Club

It looks like Pixeloo — the digital artist behind the disturbing image of a realistic Mario — is up to his old tricks again. This time, he’s, um, “realified” the protagonist of GTA IV, Niko Bellic. Actually, this is probably one of the least disturbing portraits Pixeloo has ever done, since Niko’s feature’s weren’t all that cartoonish to begin with. Still, he definitely looks like someone you wouldn’t want to mess with.

Via Pixeloo

Electronic Arts has generously extended the deadline on its offer to buyout Take Two to July 18th. The offer is an unsolicited attempt to strong arm T2 into selling that has been dragging on since February.

“Our offer price remains unchanged at $25.74 per share, which is a substantial premium to where Take-Two’s stock was trading prior to our offer,” said Owen Mahoney, Senior Vice President of EA Corporate Development. “We congratulate Rockstar on the successful launch of GTA IV but believe our offer reflects a full and fair price based on the long-term value of Take-Two’s entire operation.”

Take Two isn’t impressed and continues cross the line drawn in the sand.

“The latest extension of EA’s unsolicited, highly conditional tender offer does not alter the fact that their proposal still significantly undervalues Take-Two, a fact that is reflected in the overwhelming number of stockholders who still have not tendered their shares,” said Strauss Zelnick, Chairman of the Board of Take-Two. “Our Board of Directors remains in unanimous agreement that the proposal is contrary to the best interests of Take-Two stockholders, and the Board continues to recommend that stockholders not tender their shares to EA. The Board remains focused on the strategic process that began formally on April 30 to consider all alternatives to maximize value. We believe that these alternatives, which may include a business combination or remaining independent, will deliver greater value to stockholders than the current EA offer.”

Some companies just can’t take a hint. EA has assimilated so many different companies by now, it just can’t understand why T2 wouldn’t want to join the Collective. The whole situation is comical at this point and I find myself rooting for the underdog (not that there really is one). Obviously EA is just one of those companies that doesn’t know when to give up.

You can read the details onEA’s announcement extending the deadline, and Take Two’s response on Business Wire.