Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » Grand Theft Auto IV

Grand Theft Auto IV Fans Put Together Google Street View Of Liberty City

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 17:02:48 +0000

Grand Theft Auto 4 fans that interact on GTA4.net had come together and spent 2 months to put together an Google Street View interactive map for Liberty City, a map from the game. If you often use Google Street View and Google Maps, you will know exactly how to use the interactive map on GTA4.net. You can even filter the map based on where you can pick up different weapons, perform stunts, and activities.

One of the map’s creators named Nick revealed that the map required 125GB of disc space, which included 78,494 screenshots, 3,019 equirectangular panoramas and 1,029,000 tiles. The map hit 2.1 million views since they launched it.

“Rockstar had done a great job making Liberty City feel like a real, living, breathing place so the idea of adding a ‘street view’ feature followed on naturally,” said Nick in an interview with Giant Bomb. “At the time, it was just that: a nice idea but not something we could actually do.”

Google then gave developers access to Street View within the Google Maps API. “The scale of it was a bit of a worry, mainly the cost of hosting and serving so many images,” Nick said. “Luckily ‘Tank,’ owner and bill payer for all our GTA fansites [at] gtanet.com, was all for it.”

[GTA4.net Map via Giant Bomb]

Rockstar Games Releases GTA 3 and GTA: Vice City For Mac App Store

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 11:28:48 +0000

Rockstar Games, the company behind the Grand Theft Auto franchise, has released two of their greatest hit games for the Mac App Store. Grand Theft Auto III and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City have been put on the Mac App Store for $14.99 each. The original Grand Theft Auto III was released for the PlayStation 2 back in October 2001 and became available for Windows in May 2002. Then the Xbox got it in November 2003. You must have at least 705MB free to download Grand Theft Auto III and 1.25GB free for Vice City.

Full Length Feature Movie The Trashmaster Made With GTA IV

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 21:03:26 +0000

The trashmaster (nouvelle version nouvelle voix-off !)
Uploaded by murakawa. – Discover more gaming videos.
If you are a fan of the game Grand Theft Auto IV, then you may like The Trashmaster movie. GTA IV player and movie enthusiast Mathieu Weschler spent about two years making the movie embedded above. The movie is about a garbage man that has another job on the side. I think this movie will make a great watch sometime this weekend. I think someone at Take Two should reach out to Mathieu about hiring him for story lines for future GTA games too.

Microsoft Pays $25 Million For Exclusive Rights To GTAIV Add-On The Lost and Damned

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 19:24:43 +0000

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) is really opening up their wallet to beef up the market share for Xbox 360. The 360 exclusively gained the rights to The Lost and Damned add-on for Grand Theft Auto IV.

The Lost and Damned is only available in the Microsoft Xbox Live Internet service for $19.99. In the Lost and Damned, players assume the role of Johnny Klebitz, VP of a New Jersey motorcycle gang called the Lost.

Take-Two Interactive revealed the Microsoft investment during an earnings call in 2007. Was the $25 million worth it? Check out this review done by the NYT:

“The Lost and Damned” suffers from a few curious and unfortunate design decisions — players often have less freedom than in the original — that will probably prompt most to return to the original game after completing the new episode’s main story. But there is no question that it is the most fully realized, thoroughly produced and substantial downloadable add-on yet released for a console game. Anyone who enjoys Grand Theft Auto IV should get it.”

Perhaps it was worth it because hard core gamers already knew ahead of time that Microsoft bought the rights to the extra content. This lead to additional sales of the Xbox console. GTAIV sold 1.8 million copies for the Xbox 360 within the first 5 days.