Banner day for Take-Two and GTA IV fans. Lots of news so I will just state the facts.

• Eurogamer has reported that exclusive DLC for GTA IV should be hitting the Xbox 360 sometime in November.
• Take-Two is reporting that the DLC will hit during the Q4 of their fiscal year 2009 (Nov 08-Jan 09)- so we will keep you posted on that
• The DLC will consist of two 10-hour episodes
• GTA IV had now sold over 10 million units

All of this comes on the heals of Take-Two’s financial report which was released this morning, full of bragging rights. For example,  Q3 revenues are up from $206.4 million to $433.8 million with net income for Q3 totaling at $51.8 million or $0.67 per share. If you pull up numbers for the same time last year, you will notice that they reported a net loss of $58.5 million or $0.81per share.

For the nine months ended July 31, 2008, net revenues were $1,214.1 million, compared to $689.2 million for the same period a year ago. Net income for the first nine months of fiscal 2008 was $112.1 million or $1.48 per share, compared to a loss of ($131.3) million or ($1.83) for the 2007 period.

No wonder they are not ready to hand the reins over to EA just yet.

For the full press release which includes a slew of boring numbers, hit the jump.

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It’s a well know fact that videogames are a recent favorite scapegoat for the media and politics. Videogames are the latest bad influence on today’s youth like comic books, rock and roll and so many other controversial forms of media and art that have been targeted over the years. Unfortunately, it seems these talking heads are doing their job well.

According to a recent survey by parental advisory website What They Play, parents are more worried about their kids being exposed to Grand Theft Auto than beer or pornography.

The poll, which ran August 1-6, 2008, queried parents on what they’d be most concerned about their 17-year-old child indulging in while at a sleepover. More than 1,600 respondents revealed they’re more apprehensive about their child smoking marijuana (49 percent) and playing the video game Grand Theft Auto (19 percent), than watching pornography (16 percent) and drinking beer (14 percent).

The poll is a follow up to a survey seeking to find out whether sex or violence triggers parents’ anxieties more:

The results of the initial What They Play online poll, conducted April 4-10, 2008, found that the 1,266 participants were most offended by the following in a video game: a man and woman having sex (37 percent); two men kissing (27 percent); a graphically severed head (25 percent); and multiple use of the F-word (9 percent).

No one should really be surprised at these results. It’s pretty obvious that games including adult sexual situations will earn a mature rating more often than one featuring graphic violence. While we’ve become placidly inured to gore and violence, our nation holds true to its Puritan roots remaining squeamish over sex and nudity.

The latest Question of the Day survey in progress is based on Gears of War 2 which will offer parental controls to turn off blood and foul language. Personally I don’t understand why a mature rated game should offer these features at all. The Gears of War series and many others like it were never intended for children.

*Sigh* Another day, another story of criminals taking the “GTA Defense.”

In Milton, Georgia, three teenagers were arrested after several cars were firebombed with Molotov cocktails on the evening of July 24th. The teens were caught when police pulled receipts from a local Wal-mart and found one listing Sprite bottles, red rags, and lighter fluid. From there, they looked at the store surveillance tapes and were able to identify the ones involved. When confronted, what explanation did the teenagers give for their actions? Why, that “Grand Theft Auto” taught them “how to do it” of course. Each teen is now being charged with 19 felony counts, including arson, criminal damage to property, and possession of explosive devices.

What happened to the good old days when teenagers would blame The Anarchist Cookbook or Che Guevara’s Guerrilla Warfare on these sorts of things. Kids just don’t read enough it seems.

Via WSBTV

The blame game is in full swing in Thailand over a cab driver getting murdered, and with the crime having a supposed GTA IV connection thus leading to the game being pulled from retailers over there, the Thai Ministry of Health has issued a list of 10 violent video games to avoid for fear that they may spark more violent outbreaks.

This where it gets comical though: You may recall back in December 2007, that Detroit Prosecutor Kym Worthy was given the illustrious title of Gaming Today’s first ever “Idiot of the Day” for her outdated list of violent video games for parents to avoid during the Christmas shopping extravaganza. Well, dear readers, that is the list that the Thai Ministry of Heath sited as gaming titles to avoid. With a few exceptions, mainly Hitman: Blood Money being changed to just Hitman and Grand Theft Auto being abbreviated, it is the exact same list.

What this means, is that the Thai government is too ill-informed of the videogames currently on the market, therefore they surfed the internet until they found a list of games they could blame the ills of their current situation on. I don’t know whether to call that lazy or just plain out of touch with the times. Either way you look at it, the GTA games are being blamed for something any raging psychopath would do regardless if they had played the game or not.

Thanks: Game Politics

MMOs generally have extremely long development cycles, so I don’t think I was alone in thinking we wouldn’t be seeing APB – the new game from Crackdown developer Realtime Worlds — for a good while still. At the Developer conference yesterday, Realtime Worlds’ Colin Macdonald told videogaming247 that it might not be as long of a wait as I thought.

“We’re not that far away,” he said. “Things have been going really, really well. But it’s a mammoth game: what’s still to be done isn’t going to be done overnight. It’s still going to take a little while, but we’re not talking about that far away now.”

The success of Crackdown and the public’s interest in a Grand Theft Auto-style MMO certainly bodes well for APB. With an open beta in the works, we should be able to get our hands on the game sooner than even Macdonald suggested.

A panel of Aussie politicians put on a stunning display of their ignorance where video games are concerned on ABC’s Q&A last night.

As audience members raised the issue of the recent Fallout 3 ban, the panel exhibited a great deal of confusion over video game ratings systems: they were completely unaware that Austrailia has one. Sen. Barnaby Joyce brought up “rape in games” going so far as to equate adult video games with snuff films. Only Senator Mark Arbib (pictured at the right) maintained an unbiased equilibrium rather than condemn video games without having played them.

A transcript from the video footage follows the break.
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For the first time since the last week in January, Halo 3 has regained the its number one spot in the Xbox 360 top Live titles list. The list is based upon the number of unique users playing each game.

Halo has trailed behind Grand Theft Auto IV and/or Call of Duty 4 every week since the week of January 21. The July 7 release of the Cold Storage map (which was free of charge) likely helped, as did the pending E3 announcement about Bungie’s next Halo project — one which never came. Microsoft has said it will instead be showcasing the mysterious new Halo game at a dedicated event where they can do the game “more justice.”

Anyone want to guess if the game will hold onto its lead for a second week? I’m gonna go ahead and guess that it will, based on my expert analysis of absolutely nothing.

There are no shots at Grand Theft Auto in the the new screenshots of Saints Row 2, but they’re still worth checking out if you haven’t already gotten your fix of violent, open-world games this year. The game looks pretty good, judging by these stills, even if the “Pimps ‘n Hos” gang style thing just strikes me as somehow being pretentious.

I’ve already got a pre-order down on the game (because I’m a nice guy and like to help out the people working at GameStop), but even as big a fan of the genre as I am, I’m beginning to feel a little burned out on this style of open world game. Mercenaries 2 is close to being released, I played more than my fair share of GTA IV, and I still find myself playing Crackdown from time to time. But I can’t help but feel like many of these games aren’t innovating enough to justify their release.

Unhappy that the new Halo hasn’t made an appearance at E3? Well, don’t hold your breath for a last second showing to steal the show on its last day — Microsoft is waiting to now show the game at a dedicated event where they can do it more justice, according to Don Mattrick.

Originally clocking in at 2 1/2 hours, the game’s removal from Microsoft’s press conference helped to cut that time down to 90 minutes. “We had an embarrassment of riches,” Mattrick told the LA Times. “We felt we could do this game more justice with a more dedicated event.”

“Two big kahunas were left out of the show, and we were still able to deliver a strong performance,” Mattrick said, referring to the exclusive content Rockstar has in store for Grand Theft Auto IV.

Luke Smith has also posted some answers to the most asked questions over on Bungie.net:

1. OMG! The announce was posted at 7! This is all part of the plan.

The news was broken to us shortly before 7 p.m. and we decided to keep with tradition to make a clean break.

2. Why leave the splash page up if it’s not happening?

We left the splash page up for the folks who didn’t see the message or were planning on tuning in the following morning before the news vanished into Bungie.net’s ether.

3. But Harold Ryan is only a TESTER this has to be fake!

Harold was a tester, but assumed the position of President a while ago. Crazy Wiki’s and their misinformation.

I get the feeling that we’ll be hearing more about this new Halo once Sony starts building up more buzz as we get closer to the release of Resistance 2 and LittleBigPlanet.

While it’s been promised that Saints Row 2 will be a more lighthearted affair than Grand Theft Auto, the new “Storyline” trailer certainly doesn’t demonstrate that aspect. Instead, what you’ve got is a trailer filled with guns, violence, swearing and a stripper for good measure — in other words, a nice evening out on the town. I can’t embed the trailer here because of all those things I just mentioned, but it’s definitely worth checking out if you’re interested in seeing what the story is going to be all about in Saints Row 2.

If you haven’t watched it before, now would be a good time to check out the “Activities” trailer, which pokes fun at some of the more mundane tasks you partake in when playing GTA IV.

Saints Row 2 is still on track for a release this October, after it suffered a delay in May so that they could tweak co-op (i.e. because they were blown away by GTA IV and needed more development time.)