Eurogamer reports that Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars will features four of the five neighborhoods presented in GTA 4. All boroughs except Alderney will be present in the game.

The site also notes that the game will have a PDA with a GPS system for keeping track of missions and navigating the streets of Liberty. The touchscreen will be used for this, along with radio and controls for talking to people.

Additionally, the camera can be rotated through a full 360 degrees, despite the game being played from a top-down perspective.

Chinatown Wars is due out in Spring 2009 exclusively on DS.

It comes as no surprise that Rockstar Games is planning on releasing GTA: Vice City Stories on PS2. This comes from ESRB’s website where the US-based ratings board has given the game a ‘M’ rating (big surprise, huh?), though the entry has since been taken down.

GTA’s first PSP outing, Liberty City Stories, saw itself being released on the PS2 about six months after the PSP release. It was quite a big success on the platform, as it made its way on to the top ten best-selling games of 2006 list. The same seems to be happening to Vice City Stories, though the game’s publisher is yet to make an announcement.

A short press release from Rockstar Games reveals that a Grand Theft Auto trilogy will be released for the PS2 this Holiday season. Dubbed Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy, the compilation pack will include GTA 3, GTA: Vice City and GTA: San Andreas; it will retail for $40 and will be available starting December 4.

Today Rockstar released the first ever screenshots from GTA: Vice City Stories, showing a glimpse of the characters and vehicles.

More after the jump.
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Sequel to the most popular PSP title ever - Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories - has gotten the official cover shot, as well as the official retail price and a shipping date. Set for release on October 17 in North America and October 20 in Europe, Vice City Stories will retail as a premium title for $50. The game, even though the pack shot shows “Rating Pending”, will most definitely be rated Mature.

Somehow missed this during E3: the next PSP game in the Grand Theft Auto franchise will be set in Vice City and is dubbed GTA: Vice City Stories. The game will take place in the familiar city that was visited back in the PS2 game, but will feature an all-new story, characters, scenarios and more.

Vice City Stories is in development at Rockstar Leeds and will be “smashing expectations of portable gaming,” according to Sam House, founder of Rockstar Games and Executive Producer.

The game is set for release on October 17 in the US, with Europe getting it three days later. As for GTA: Liberty City Stories for the PS2 - it’s shipping next month.

As seen to the right, Peter Moore of Microsoft has tattooed “Grand Theft Auto IV” on his left arm the same way he did “Halo 2″. This is because Microsoft has proudly announced that GTA4 will be available on Xbox 360 on day one of release - the GTA franchise has been Sony’s jewel as of late, being released first on the PS2 and then Xbox and PC after some time.

This is part of a “groundbreaking” agreement between Microsoft and Take-Two that will have the fourth entry in the free-roaming series released simultaneously to both Xbox 360 and PS3. Separately, Microsoft and Rockstar have announced a strategic alliance to provide exclusive episodic content for the game via Xbox Live, offering ever-expanding gameplay exclusively to gamers on the console.

Grand Theft Auto IV is in development at Rockstar North and will be released in North America on October 16, 2007 and October 19 in Europe.

Frugal gamers rejoice! Rockstar Games has announced that Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories for the PS2 will be released on June 6 throughout North America for a budget price of $20. Europeans will get the game on June 9 and will retail for 30 EUR and 20 GBP.

Already available for the PSP since October 2005, Liberty City Stories will offer PS2 owners a big screen experience of the same storyline and missions.

The Xbox 360 backwards compatibility team has churned out another update that focuses on revising previous additions rather than adding compatibility to more. That’s not to say some titles weren’t added: Black, Star Wars Battlefront 2 and Pro Evolution Soccer 5 are now playable on the next-gen console. The following list of games has received updates, focusing on making them more compatible with the new console:

• Darkwatch
  
• Fable
  
• Fable: The Lost Chapters
  
• Forza Motorsport
  
• Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
  
• Half-Life 2
  
• kill.switch
  
• Ninja Gaiden
  
• Ninja Gaiden Black
  
• SSX 3
  
• Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Chaos Theory
  
• World Series Baseball 2K3

Seeing how popular the Grand Theft Auto franchise is getting (thanks mostly to zealous and disenchanted politicians), Take-Two has signed a three-year deal with “key Rockstar personnel” that will see them giving the company $25 million in a bid to safeguard the “creative engine” behind the GTA series.

Outlined in a 10-Q filing, the agreement will provide the “key” personnel with $25 million in restricted stock, plus unspecified internal royalties. However, as Next-Gen humorously points out, it won’t help keep their “magic touch” intact; it also isn’t a guarantee that these key employees will stay.