GTA4.TV Newsletter!

GTA4.tv News Letter: From GTA-SanAndreas.com to GTA4.tv

Written and published by Qdeathstar Friday, January 18th 2008

Psy's first foray into the world of Grand Theft Auto fan sites came in the form of GTA-Sanandreas.com. Founded in early 2003 the fan site was one of the first created for the third installment of the GTA:III trilogy. And, he got the name right. Soon after the name for GTA: San Andreas was confirmed, a flood of members swarmed the forums and the site took off, becoming one of the most popular GTA fan sites around. Members such as Mello Yello, Qdeathstar, Duffman, and Darkruler (Cudamine) signed up during this time and would later become staff members of the site, and are still quite active in the forums today.

After the hype over GTA-Sanandreas had started to settle down, A new GTA fan site, GTAguides.com, was created that would serve as a e-guide to the Grand Theft Auto Series. The site was fully up and running by the middle of 2005 and had gotten of to a successful start. However, the domain name self expired and an advertising company bought it before GTAguides.com's owner Psy had a chance to recover it. Qdeathstar, a staff member at GTAguides.com had offered GTA-guides.com as an alternate domain name, but the idea never really took off as hype moved more towards next-gen renditions of the GTA franchise!

GTA4.tv was launched in late 2006, and it contains everything you need to know about the newest Grand Theft Auto game. If you haven't been to our forums for awhile, or seen the new site, check it out now and let us know what you think.

GTA4 has been in development since the release of GTA: San Andreas in 2004. On May 10th 2006 Rockstar officially announced Grand Theft Auto 4 and said that for the first time ever, GTA4 would be released on the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 simultaneously. In the months that followed, Rockstar announced that the game would be released in October 2007 and that there would be multiple SKUs. One SKU would be the game itself for $59.99, while another version would contain the game, and several other items for $89.99.

From early 2007 till now, a great deal of information was released in the build up to GTA4's release. Three trailers have been released during this time. The first was entitled ?Things Will Be Different? and it was followed by ?Looking For That Special Someone? and ?Move Up, Ladies?. The trailers revealed that GTA4 will be set in modern day New York City and that the main character will be a poor immigrant from Eastern Europe named Niko Bellic trying to make a better, but not extravagant life for himself. Throughout the summer of 2007 various magazines and gaming websites released previews of the games, and several members of GTA4.tv began to match the buildings found in the game to buildings and other landmarks found in real life. On GTA4.tv you can view the in-game / real life comparisons. And yes, the Statue of Liberty is in the game. The also commented that while GTA4's landmass will be smaller relative to GTA: San Andreas, the sequel will more than make up for in terms of detail.

At the beginning of august everything seemed on track for an October 2007 release; however, just a few days later Rockstar announced that GTA4 would be delayed until the second quarter of 2008. Since the announcement, Rockstar has not given any clarifications or updates about the release date. After the announcement of the delay, the amount of information regarding GTA 4 such as screenshots and magazine interviews began to decline. Since the announcement of the delay only one trailer and a handful of screenshots have been released. However, on January 14 2008 GTA4.tv reported than Rockstar was apparently ready to start up the hype-train once again. Sources from Kikizo and Gamestop have confirmed that Rockstar has informed them that this week they will be showing the game to several popular gaming sites. Kikizo and other gaming sites have also confirmed that all new previews of the game will be out before the end of January!

Now is the perfect time to visit us and find out what all the hype is about! Visit us at www.GTA4.tv and keep up to date on all the latest GTA information! We will also be holding contests and drawings in the weeks to come so be sure to keep it tuned to your favorite fansite, GTA4.tv.