"Hi folks, Cooper Hawkes here with rather interesting RUMOR to report.

About a week ago I received one of those famous anonymous e-mails that actually wasn’t about updating my PayPal account.

Instead it went like this:

Hey Hawkes,

I like that you are giving more PlayStation news than before. You do not appear to be a fanboy when it comes to gaming so I figured I’d throw you a bone.

Take-Two and Sony will announce GTA Exclusive as a counter program to Xbox 360’s release.

Do your homework and you will know I am right.

Good luck.

So I started doing some homework, the first thing I found was this article at EuroGamer which had a section that read:

Games wise - and this is where things get interesting - OPSM2 US reveals a few items of gossip on GTA 4 (as it's being referred to), claiming that "Rockstar North is creating a specialized game engine for PS3 that will bring GTA 4 to life to a degree that the PS2 games could only hint at," with the aim being to create "a city that's less repetitive and where everything - and everyone- looks and acts more like they would in the real world on every level." Good stuff; but will it come out next year, as is hoped?

Interesting for sure, only one problem: Technically speaking the series is up to part 6 not 4. Grand Theft Auto III, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (4) and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (5), though the 4 designation could refer to the 4th version that is 3D instead of Top Down like the first two Grand Theft Auto’s were.

Now you couple that with Gabe Newell’s comments in his video interview with 1UP.COM where he says (and I am paraphrasing this) that optimizing something for one console means either a huge task in porting it to another, or not porting it at all.

The conclusion I have reached is the following:" [more]