Here is the big skinny from this morning's bloggers breakfast event hosted by Microsoft at GDC 2008. There were many topics touched on at the event (follow the kink below), but probably the biggest was finally getting confirmation of the true nature of the GTA4 DLC that Microsoft has paid $50 million for to secure exclusively.http://www.thebitbag.com/2008/02/21/microsoft-blog...

So if I read this correctly, what is being said here is that there are not likely going to be any huge standalone expansions this gen to GTA4 like there was to GTA3, last gen. But the DLC that Microsoft has secured, will be in the form of said expansions and will be exclusive to Xbox 360.

Well I guess that pretty much seals it, I know which version of the game I am getting.

Honestly. For $50 million (how much it costs to make and market 2 or 3 AAA titles this gen), I guess a rational person would not have expected anything less.

wow 50 big ones. That is pretty damn insane.

Whilst I think GTA is great, I can't help feel that there are probably a lot of great game ideas out there that deserve -at least some of- that money instead...

Don't even want to think about how much space this is going to take up on my HD

Yes, which truly sucks because MS will eventually force a lot of people to buy their overpriced hard drive.

I don't even want to think of the milkage actually. They are going for another 50 million that's for sure.I think that's crap too and I'll also wait and see.

If it's really as big as an expansion like VC or SA I'm willing to pay for it.. If it's smaller premium DLC, in true MS nickle&diming tradition, they can stick it where the sun don't shine..

It's as simple as that.. I had enough of the milking on XBL.. I only download free DLC, and only pay if it can be considered a true addon, so not just a few new maps or models etc..

And if the GTA-IV DLC doesn't fit on my 20GB harddrive I'm done with MS and it's Xbox 360.. I don't think they will be that stupid, the download will be 1-2 GB max I think (lots of shared files), not more..

It WILL fit on your regular HDDs, the question is how big will it be? And 2GB is A LOT of space that will be taken if you put it that way, 1 GB is a lot of space that will be permanently taken.

Like I said a long time ago, MS gives no incentives aside from the product itself, which is just stupid. If we buy the expansion, they should give you a coupon or some number that gets you a discount of at LEAST 1/3 the price of an HDD.

And well, SA for example, they already said the city itself included with the game won't be that big, so I don't see what makes anyone think they will do something like that for an add on. But hey, I guess it CAN happen.......somehow.

We'll see, hopefully they thought it out a bit more.

I got a 120GB HDD so I won't have any problems ^_^

I hope that's true, but I think anything less than small city of game space would not have been worth the 50Million.

I think an updated version of the old liberty city map with Claude as a playable character would be pretty awesome...

[quote=FreeSwag]Here is the big skinny from this morning's bloggers breakfast event hosted by Microsoft at GDC 2008. There were many topics touched on at the event (follow the kink below), but probably the biggest was finally getting confirmation of the true nature of the GTA4 DLC that Microsoft has paid $50 million for to secure exclusively.when the topic said REVEALED i thought it was actually gonna say what the expansion included...

And I dont see how they can say Vice City and San Anreas were just expansions...maybe Liberty City Stories and even Vice City were like expansions to GTA3, but San Andreas was an entirely new and different game. the only thing similar is alot of the same gfx and animations but thats like calling Halo2 and Halo3 expansions packs of Halo...

Those could be considered expansions because they were the same engine and guts behind the scenes with new locations and things added

Agree with Grift, and I also agree that VC and SA were TRUE sequels.

I don't think he's trying to say they were "expansions" in the sense that they were any less better then any other game out there, but that when GTA goes to a new engine, it goes up a number, so San Andreas + Vice City were games of that year, and no doubt things will be the same with GTA 4, we should get another couple games on this engine, then when we get next-gen consoles comming out, we'll see GTA 5.

But i can say, wtf? There was "new" locations added??? No they were both made from the ground up, if they just had "things added" then the islands would both be identical in shape and size to the map of GTA3.

Lol to say Vice City and SA were expansions packs is to say every sequel to any game on the same engine ever are expansion packs, and thats just ludicrous

In a certain way, Vice City and San Andreas are "expansions" to GTA 3, and in a certain way they are not.

Rockstar North/DMA Designs has always been funny about that with the GTA series. Every time they reset the GTA universe, they always do several things in common. One of them is that every GTA series starts in a remodeled, re-imagined, revamped Liberty City. The other is that only the Liberty City-based games get the iterational numbers in their name.

So you had the original GTA

After that came GTA 2, which was followed by GTA: London 1969

After that, GTA 3, followed by Vice City and San Andreas

And now, GTA 4. What comes next is anyone's guess. But I think internally, Rockstar North has always looked at the none numerical games in the GTA series as "expansions" on the original themes, ideas and gameplay posed by games with the numerical nomenclature. Yeah, we all know these are actually whole games we are being presented with, but I do not think Rockstar North looks at it that way. I guess the happy-medium solution would be to look at them from the perspective of expansions carried to the extreme. Or just think of them as volumes. Example. GTA3 Volume 2: Vice City or GTA 3 Volume 3: San Andreas. I think that's closer to middle ground between how Rockstar North sees their projects and how the rest of the world does. It's kinda like Infinity Ward. To them, Call of Duty 4 is actually Call of Duty 3, and they called it that internally while they were working on the game. They refused to recognize Treyarche's Call of Duty 3, as a true sequel to Call of Duty 2, even though Activision, clearly felt very differently about it.

The big question this time around is exactly how does Rockstar North look to deliver these new "volumes"? Are they going to crank out them as they have in the past, press them on discs and sell them multi-platform? Or are they going completely digital distribution this time out, and the only company that's getting these new volumes, is Microsoft? There is certainly plenty of circumstantial evidence to lend credence to both ideas. However, (at least for the moment) I feel that the what little evidence is out here, points more towards the latter of the two ideas. The new Liberty City is smaller (square mileage) than San Andreas; so there is always the possibility of expanding the city itself over the course of the next couple of DLC - possibly even expanding to cover all of Liberty State, so when all is said and done, you wind up with the square mileage of San Andreas State, only this time on the East Coast (New York, Philadelphia and Boston or DC, perhaps). Or there is the matter of the billboards discovered in the original "Things Will Be Different" trailer. One of them clearly stated you could buy a ticket to travel to Vice City. Maybe there is more to that than just background clutter on the side of the road? What if one of the DLCs is Vice City? Maybe Carcer City is the other DLC? And exactly how long does this go on for? We know matter of fact to expect at least two chapters - Take-Two leaked as much during a shareholders' briefing. But there was rumor of a third chapter. Microsoft has always been pointedly mum about the exact nature of the deal between them and Take-Two. No one has ever gone on record and stated point blank there were only going to be two chapters and no more. And for $50 million dollars, why should it be? Rockstar has hinted in several interviews they were looking to potentially push the series down the episodic avenue. Then it was hinted at the bloggers breakfast, that if the first two DLC are successful, it may be the way that Rockstar continues to go from now on. Yeah, I know that it is all supposition, but it's not like there is not any evidence hinting that things are going in that direction. If nothing else, for $50 million, we should expect at least something along the lines of Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories. Which is still a huge chunk of new game to play per DLC. I mean think about it. Microsoft paid only $10 million for Gears of War. Now they've paid five times as much for exclusive, downloadable content for GTA 4. Just doing the math with the raw numbers . . .

Anyway, just some things to think about.OR!

Instead of getting all upset or worried about it, you could just do what I did and get you an Xbox 360 Elite for FREE.

I think everyone knows by now that my PS3 is the only system that I have paid for this gen. But I got the Xbox 360 Elite and the Wii for free. In retrospect, I should have gotten the PS3 for free as well, but I honestly did not trust those "free" sites until my best friend did one and start getting his systems for free. The one lesson I learned from that, is that if it worked for my mate (who's not the sharpest tool in the shed, if you catch me), then I could do it to. All I had to do was make sure I got mine from the same company he got his, to avoid any chance of getting scammed. And believe me, it sure as death beat spending my rent money (and getting evicted) to get my game systems. Unfortunately, it was no where near as fun as holding up a liquor store (ha-ha, just kidding). But now that I know this one company works, I'd do it again in a heartbeat - even been considering just that and selling the extra system on eBay. Either way, having the 120GB harddrive beats the mess out of worrying if I'm going to fill up that tiny 13GB harddrive the other Xbox comes with. I go to Gamestop all the time and that's all half the people there ever talk about anymore; how worried they are their 13GB harddrive is going to fill up, and how unfairly Microsoft has priced the 120GB harddrives.

I guess I'd complain to if I did not know what I know now, and ran around thinking I was stuck with the 13GB drive - all the while DLC just keep getting bigger and bigger and more companies are making beefier DLC expansions, with the GTA4 DLC looking to trump everyone and suck any remaining space out of those paltry 13GB drives.

I can tell you one thing. It's certainly nice never having to worry about that problem.

i agree. one thing im worried about in terms of GTAIV is how the sequels will pan out. GTA3/vice city and san andreas where based on the areas of the original top down GTA way back when. re-imaginings if you will. now that GTAIV is in liberty city...AGAIN...does that mean we're essentially going to get another run through of the vice city/ san andreas sequels again only prettier, and different in terms of plot and era.

will the next GTA be set in vice city again?

Tbh I've never come close to filling the 13GB on my Xbox 360.. Biggest downloads are demo's, which I usually delete again after a while.. I think the lack of space is only an issue if you really want to keep everything and also download a lot of HD movies (which is not yet available in my country).. Atm I have 6,4GB free space with 6 demo's installed (some are over 1GB)..

Only real heavy users need more space I think, and for those there is the (overpriced) 120GB harddrive.. Instead of buying that I would probably sell my Xbox 360 Premium and buy a new Elite model.. That will cost me a little bit more, but at least I'll have a new (probably more reliable) model, and not left with a useless spare Xbox 360 20GB harddrive.. But like I said, I don't need the extra space, so I'll stick with my pre-launch refurbished October 2005 Xbox 360 Premium (which still works fine with no problems at all) for the time being..

Good move.

I think its safe to say the future of GTA will be on 360

My best guess is GTA will be some kind of tryout to sell directly to the consumer through Xboxlive, with all the downloads they are pushing it seems like a good idea to have a AAA title availeble exclusively through your download service.

Wy else would they pay 50 milion.. thats alot of money, and I think we would be ripped off if its just a small extra island or something, I bet other characters will be involved also.. just like vice city and SA.

rumours say that the next gta will be ps3 exclusive tho....whether its true or not remains to be seen.

also, ps3 will also get DLC in some form or another, it just wont be as substantial as that of the 360.

its interesting to see where the series goes from here tbh. if they anounce the next game as vice city tho i think they really need a shot of originality or something.

Complete rubbish, anyone that says the next GTA is a PS3 exclusive, i demand you punch their sony fanboy face in.

And i doubt the next one will be vice city, with every new GTA, we'll see Liberty City, as we have done in the past, then we should get another 1 or 2, depending on how quick the "next-gen" arrives, set in different area's.

It would be really nice to see them experiment with different times and areas, i wouldn't mind seeing GTA: Mexico, or GTA: 1800's London.

Hopefully they'll realise that they can only base games in America modern day for so long before they give their ideas a shot of innovation.

i know, but stranger things have happened.