It's a different take of what Rockstar's founder actually did say in an interview as one of MCV Entertainment's exclusive feature, but it's factually accurate. Sam Houser, who many claim to be the driving force behind the Grand Theft Auto franchise, was executive producer of Grand Theft Auto 3. That game  became the direction of the subsequent iterations of the sandbox game later on. He says that powerful people have been out to put Rockstar out of business, and they're quite plenty.

It seems that Rockstar's own Vice President of Creativity, Dan Houser, has something to say about the recent boom in casual gaming. Before you ask, no, he actually appreciates what the Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS are doing - but as far as casual games are concerned, you might as well color him unimpressed. Check out what Dan said in the full article and see what it means to you.

In the video games industry, many of the respected names include Rockstar Games and its Dan Houser. So when the guy talks, you better listen.

Recently, the guy was interviewed about marketing titles and moving away from the annual sales bottleneck during the holiday season. You can read about these after the jump!

With Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto IV (Xbox 360, PS3) winding up for its highly anticipated release this April, Dan Houser revealed a couple of juicy tidbits about some of the game's critical and "defining moments". Read all about it in the full article.

If you got excited about yesterday's rumor that there was a Grand Theft Auto  movie in the works, you will be disappointed to know that Rockstar Games has gone on record and denied speculations about the matter.

Aside from that, Rockstar also made clear that they are not interested in any project concerning GTA outside the video game industry. More on this after the jump!

Bully (Xbox 360, Wii, PS2), the "Dennis the Menace simulator" game from Rockstar Games that went through its fair share of controversy (considering Rockstar's history for it), recently won the Best Videogame Script at the BAFTA awards.

The script for Bully (also known as Canis Canem Edit in Europe) was written by Dan Houser and Jacob Krarup.

A few months before it starts wreaking havoc on the Microsoft Xbox 360 and the Sony PlayStation 3,Grand Theft Auto IV details have already begun circulating throughout the gaming community. We already know quite a lot, but GamePro Germany has a little bit more to add. Check these out and see if any of these details ring a bell:

1. Multiple animations when breaking into cars- Rather than the usual punch-and-throw animation, Rockstar says that there will be several more realistic scenes witnessed when Niko tries to hop aboard a vehicle he intends to steal. This includes breaking the window open with an elbow shot and looking to check for potential witnesses while he hotwires a car.

2. Less unrealistic gameplay bells and whistles- Developers say that unrealistic markers and arrows will be minimized and other in-game devices will be employed to give direction to players. Do we smell GPS here?

3. Every street will have a name- Developers are still deliberating on the prospect of whether or not they should give every street a name which will be displayed onscreen when you enter it. Another issue which we already know of is still undecided: Whether or not the city will be fully accessible from the beginning or not.

4. Xbox 360 vs PS3- Dan Houser of Rockstar says that the idea is to not have any hint of bias towards any of the platforms. He says there won't be any differences between the versions for each console.

5. Downloadable extras- Rockstar reveals that there will be some freebies, but there will be some things you have to pay for too.

We certainly like what we're hearing and from the looks of it, we may have a more realistic crime spree than ever. We've already seen the screens, so we know it'll look good. The only thing left to find out is that if Niko and his city stacks up to his older brothers from consoles past.

 

CVG reports that Dan Houser, Vice President of Creative at Rockstar, said in the latest issue of Official Xbox Magazine, that the reason why they decided on having a New York-esque Liberty City for the highly anticipated GTA IV, is because it adds an element of content to the game. He expounds:

We've always wanted to do New York properly... With GTA III we were dealing with so many technical issues that we didn't really think trying to make somewhere like a real place was important at the time and then we discovered later that gave an added element of content to the place.

We've got a full time team of researchers and photographers in the office in New York who get emails from the artists in Scotland saying, 'hey can you find out that this building's like, or what the traffic flow's like around here?' or the designers want to find out how the law systems work. We wouldn't be as confident doing a next-gen game the way we wanted, somewhere we didn't have a base.

Now, what really got our attention in this one is his comment about Rockstar researching New York traffic. Accurate traffic? Add accurate traffic to the passage of time in-game, and one can probably safely assume that the Taxi-cab missions (if they're still there) will be a lot harder now.

That particular issue of Official Xbox Magazine is currently on sale.

A couple of days ago, we got a preview of Grand Theft Auto IV (PS3, 360) from The Official PlayStation Magazine (OPM). Today, we get the details from its Microsoft counterpart in publication, The Official Xbox Magazine (OXM). The gta4.net website was able to scrape out the new info from the publication and drafted the list of details that you guys might be dying to know.

We've paraphrased the whole list below:

• GTA IV is now 66% complete.
• Crosshairs pop up when Niko pulls out a gun. This could imply manual aiming in the game.
• When using your mobile phone, the camera will show a zoom-in panel of the mobile phone's interface at the bottom-right corner of your screen - allows you to view your address book for "jobs" and view other contacts.
• Exterior fire escape staircases are accessible; some meetings will happen high up in skyscrapers too - which could lead to you throwing people off the building from that height. Rawr.
• Hand to hand combat will feel "much more natural" and is currently being reworked.
• Camera angles can be changed even while in a car, but this feature is still being experimented on. Rockstar promises to make it more practical and functional though.
• Getting to control boats has been confirmed, steering them is "really nice." Huh?
• Central Park has also been confirmed to be in the game. The fictional name though hasn't been revealed yet.
• Dan Houser confirms that Liberty City in GTA IV is the biggest GTA city they've done so far. He says that details are a big thing.
• Houser also says that they're evolving how the radio works into the game, as well as how police behavior reacts to the things you do.
• The Rockstar developer studio in Scotland has been asking the NYC studio about more specific information on buildings and traffic flow in the Big Apple.
• There's an "Eastern European-sounding" dance station in one of the radio stations.
• Rockstar's "69" humor is back. There's a sign for a "69th Street Diner" and a building called "Twitchins" - that's GTA's version of Brooklyn's Domino's Sugar Factory. Easter eggs!
• "Fun ridiculous" weapons are also in the game because they don't really want to be too "naturalistic".

The GTA franchise has already gathered a strong following through out the years. With Grand Theft Auto IV though, the fan base will be divided between the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 (PS3).

If you have the former and therefore will be playing the video game title on that platform, we suggest you take this next one with a grain of salt. This is part of the interview conducted by the Official PlayStation Magazine (OPM) with Rockstar Creative Vice President Dan Houser:

OPM: On PS3 you've got a guarantee that every machine is going to have a hard-drive and, with Blu-ray, you've got plenty of storage, whereas on Xbox 360 there's no guarantee of a hard-drive and you're working with the DVD format. Does that create limitations?

Houser: Yep.

 

As if realizing what he just uttered, Houser followed up the rather short answer with, "To be honest with you, we haven't solved all those riddles yet. The difficulties aren't limited to working on Microsoft's box. Both have enormous challenges, both have their own particular pleasures and pains."

However, Rockstar is reportedly giving a select group of press people a demo and preview of Grand Theft Auto IV using a 360. We guess we'll all just have to see when the game becomes available on October 16.