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

It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise when you consider GTA didn’t have much time to sell in April, but it was a much closer contest for the top spots in May than you might have guessed. While the 360 version of GTA IV did take the top spot with 871.3k copies sold, Mario Kart was right on its heels with 784.4k and Wii Fit not too far behind at 687.7k. The PS3 version of GTA IV came in at number four with 442.9k and then there was a significant drop off to number five, Wii Play, which sold 294.6k copies.

Wii Play’s number is actually fairly low given the number of Wii systems that were sold in the month, but it’s quite possible that many of those Wiis were sold alongside a copy of Wii Fit, which isn’t a multiplayer-happy game like so many other games in the system’s library.

The DS and Wii also took four more spots in the top ten with Smash Bros., Guitar Hero III, and the two versions of Pokemon Mystery Dungeon coming in at numbers 6, 8, 9, and 10. Iron Man on the unkillable PlayStation 2 snuck in at number 7, no doubt thanks in large part to the movie’s great success.

May 2008 Software Sales:

1. Grand Theft Auto IV (360) – 871,300
2. Mario Kart Wii w/ wheel (Wii) – 787,400
3. Wii Fit w/ balance board (Wii) – 687,700
4. Grand Theft Auto IV (PS3) – 442,900
5. Wii Play w/ remote (Wii) – 294,600
6. Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Wii) – 171,100
7. Iron Man (PS2) – 130,600
8. Guitar Hero III (Wii) – 116,800
9. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Darkness (DS) – 107,000
10. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time (DS) – 102,000

Metal Gear Solid 4 is sure to come in highly with the June NPDs, and it’ll be difficult to overcome both Grand Theft Auto and a continued stream of Wii Fit copies. It’s definitely got a good shot at outselling them, though, and with those hard-to-come-by MGS4 bundles selling like crazy, the PS3 will be sure to see a nice bump in the first month of summer.

I thought the numbers might rise from April, when both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 had average months despite the release of Grand Theft Auto IV. Clearly, that wasn’t the case; the PS3 outsold the 360 in May by a little over 20,000 units, but neither system saw a dramatic boost from April. Clearly, the people who have been holding out for the release of GTA IV either already had picked up a system of their choice or is continuing to wait. Perhaps the kids are waiting until Christmas when they’ve got some cash?

Nintendo, meanwhile, continues to run circles around the competition. The Wii sold less than April, but still was more than 450,000 units ahead of Sony or Microsoft’s best effort — better than triple the PS3 or 360. The DS was up, though, and like the Wii outsold the PS3 and 360 combined. Wow.

May 2008 Hardware Sales (April numbers in parentheses):

• Nintendo Wii – 675,100 (714,200)
• Nintendo DS – 452,600 (414,800)
• PlayStation 3 – 208,700 (187,100)
• Xbox 360 – 186,600 (188,000)
• PlayStation Portable – 182,300 (192,700)

Conjuring up images of a man with a monocle (for Jonathan, at least), Janco Partners analyst Mike Hickey has criticized a recent Saints Row 2 trailer that ripped on Grand Theft Auto IV, referring to it as “pompous.”

“The trailer directly attacks Grand Theft Auto IV in game content, an unusually pompous position in our view, considering GTA IV is estimated to be the highest grossing 1st week entertainment release of all time – and is currently the highest quality scored game on both the Xbox 360 and PS3 according to Metacritic.com,” Hickey said in a note sent to clients and certain press, according to Gamasutra.

He continued, “We remain conservative on our sales expectations for Saints Row 2, in light of mediocre game previews and a delayed release in-part from quality concerns.”

That seems pretty harsh of him. The trailer (watch it here) seemed pretty tongue-in-cheek to me, and I found it absolutely hilarious. Of course, if the first game is any indication, Saints Row 2 itself will be polluted with lame, uninspired satire that’s a poor rip from the GTA games. That notwithstanding, I still believe the trailer was terrific, and I hope it’s the first of many to come.

Hope there’s enough for you to do in Grand Theft Auto IV as it stands — Take-Two announced today as part of its Q2 financial reports that the Xbox 360 exclusive DLC has been delayed until Q1 2009. It was originally planned for release later this year.

According to CEO Ben Feder, the delay has nothing to do with development, but rather about “portfolio balancing.” So does that mean they’ve got a lot coming out later this year, or that they’ve got nothing early next year? I’m better on the latter, as two new Carnival Games titles were announced for later this year during the conference call.

During the second quarter of 2008, a total of 78% of all Take-Two publishing revenue came from Grand Theft Auto IV and GTA catalog sales — that’s a pretty astonishing amount, but there wasn’t much from Take-Two to have stolen any percentage of their revenue.

With this delay, I wonder if owners of the PS3 version feel vindicated in their purchase at all. Fewer load times, less pop-up, and the same content until at least 2009 — doesn’t sound too shabby.

Electronic Arts desperately wants to gobble up Take-Two in its entirety as quickly as possible, but with repeated failed attempts over the past several months, EA is going to have to wait even longer before it can have a chance at snapping up Rockstar’s parent company. EA has filed an SEC form agreeing not to complete its acquisition attempts of Take-Two until either the Federal Trade Commission completes its investigation or 45 days have passed since EA “substantially complied” with FTC requests, according to GI.biz.

The present EA offer for the company was last amended to expire on June 16 — something which has happened a number of times now. Back in April, the FTC requested information from EA as a part of its review of the $2 billion acquisition.

With the SEC agreement, it seems likely that we’ll be waiting past the June 16 deadline before we find out if (but more likely, when) EA will be acquiring Take-Two. I continue to beg the gaming gods to not let this happen, as I refuse to believe my two favorite sports franchises (NBA and NFL 2K) could be killed — and by the same company, no less.)

There was bound to be a long tail on a game like Grand Theft Auto IV and its impact on hardware sales. It’s already been a month since the game was released, and we’re beginning to see some of the post-launch numbers that we couldn’t get from the April NPDs. According to Chart-Track, the Xbox 360 has sold 18% more consoles than the PlayStation 3 in the UK since GTA’s launch, Eurogamer reports.

In addition, sales of the game are also higher on 360, with a 57% share of sales for the game in its first four weeks of availability. Approximately 1.3 million copies have been sold between the two consoles, which would place it as already having outsold last year’s best selling game, FIFA 08.

There’s a good point that Eurogamer made which is worth keeping in mind. You should take these numbers with a grain of salt because the PS3 already saw a boost in its sales from the release of Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, so there was only so much more GTA IV could do. For the full year thus far, the PS3 has sold 10% more systems than the 360 has; prior to GTA’s release, it was twice that. So while the numbers may be a bit misleading, it does seem clear that GTA has been extremely helpful to the Xbox 360’s case in the UK.

You may have heard how some of the voice actors from GTA IV don’t feel they were compensated well enough for their work, most prominently Michael Hollick, the voice of Niko. Well, the voice of Roman, Jason Zumwalt, feels the same way; but he’s not sitting around doing nothing about it. No, he’s using his new celebrity to rent himself out to fans for some extra cash. And, well, also to pay off some of his debts it seems. “Oh! That is painful in real life!”