Rockstar Games today released the second trailer of Grand Theft Auto IV entitled "Looking for that special someone". You can get it via the official GTA IV website or via Yahoo! Games. Some facts about the trailer were also included in a press release which accompanied the trailer:

• All footage is captured in real-time on a next generation gaming console.
• Running on Rockstar's proprietary next generation game engine, R.A.G.E., allowing for an unprecedented level of realism and interactivity.
• Game is using euphoria, a fully procedural animation package created by NaturalMotion.
• Song is by New York City based band The Boggs and is titled "Arm In Arm (Shy Child Remix)"

...so Euphoria is finally confirmed. You can also download a torrent of the trailer. Be sure to check out our updated screenshot gallery also.

Just a quick reminder that the new trailer, "Looking for that special someone," will go online today at 12 PM EDT, 5 PM in the UK, and 2 AM (June 29^th) in Australia. At the time of this post, there is just over 3 hours remaining. Keep an eye on the countdown at the top of this page!

Once the countdown reaches zero, visit the official GTA IV website or Yahoo's Grand Theft Auto page to see the new trailer. Other sites such as EuroGamer, IGN, and GameSpot, including ourselves, should have the trailer up about an hour afterwards.

In other news, the guys at GTA-Scene.de have discovered some new IV artworks on Xbox Live. Check them out:

Also, we are led to believe that the 2 screenshots released yesterday are taken from today's trailer.

Yahoo's coverage is finally showing off, though this isn't the sort of content we expected. If you don't want to know the title of the song featured in the upcoming trailer, don't read any further. From Yahoo!...

"The new trailer is scored with "Arm In Arm (Shy Child Remix)" by New York City-based band The Boggs. The idea was to show a real street-level view of Rockstar's version of the city with a band that belongs there...

...While Rockstar is reluctant to discuss the details, time is a big factor in GTA IV. The new trailer indicates in subtle ways how the passage of time might affect the game, and there are clues that indicate some missions, or mission elements, might be time-specific."

You can listen to a different remix of the song on their Virb profile over here.

More: Yahoo! Games

R* have added two new screenshots to the official website:

View the rest of the GTA4 screenshots at our gallery.

So far it seems as though the "exclusive" content promised by Yahoo! Games was over hyped, understandably so with how they promoted it. The interview with Rockstar's Vice President of Creative, Dan Houser, went live today, providing nothing new that we didn't know already from recent previews and interviews. There is however one interesting bit...

"[Niko] arrives in Liberty City, our reinterpretation of New York, from Eastern Europe to meet up with his cousin Roman. He has neglected to tell Niko that he is just struggling and is in debt to some Russian mobsters. At the same time, Niko claims to have left Europe simply for the adventure of America, but he is also looking for someone... and running away from some recent mistakes."

Is this "someone" the same "special someone" that is being hinted at in the title of tomorrow's trailer? Perhaps we'll see who that is...

Also, Microsoft today sent out a press release announcing the trailer to go live one hour after its debut on Yahoo! Games and the official GTA IV website (we'll have links and a streaming version available soon after) on Xbox Live. In addition to this, they'll be releasing an Xbox 360 Dashboard Theme and Gamer Pictures. It is unknown whether this will be released for free or whether it will have a price tag on it. We'll let you know once it's added.

Dan Houser's Taxicab Interview: Read Here
EDIT: Yahoo! updated their article with the same screenshots released earlier tonight by R* (as seen in news post above). No exclusive images as of yet.

If you pre-order the Grand Theft Auto IV Special Edition, this is what you can expect to receive...

(The boxart isn't final, of course.)

Tension mounted yesterday as the hours went by with Yahoo! Games yet to post anything new GTA IV-related. Late that evening it turned out that all they provided was an article looking back at the previous GTA games...

Tonight we still haven't got anything new from them, but posted an article on "what we know so far". In it they list an exclusive interview to be published tomorrow, June 27th.

Want more GTA details? Check back with Yahoo! Games on June 27 for an exclusive interview with Rockstar VP of creative, Dan Houser.

Both Yahoo! and Rockstar Games stated that the site will in fact provide exclusive content at some point this week -- with R* personally telling us via e-mail -- so we do hope that the interview tomorrow will provide any new details on the game, as well as the promised screenshots. Once it goes live, we'll let you know.

Related: GTAForums

UPDATE: R* haven't finalized any plans for a definitive number of trailers yet. That is exactly what they told us when we asked them to comment.

The latest "1UP Yours" podcast has a snippet from John Davison who recently saw the new IV demo at R*. He said that the latest demo focuses on an updated version of Broker (the area featured in the previous demo) and revealed that R* plan to release 3 trailers in total, meaning there will be one more trailer after "Looking for that special someone," which is due to be released next week. Listen to the clip below:

Thanks to Rob for the heads up!

Related Link: GTAForums Topic

As most of you already know, the second trailer for GTA IV launches next week on Thursday. However, seems as though you don't have to wait until then to get more details and images of the game. Today we received a press release from Yahoo! Games announcing exclusive content to be published on a special dedicated website of theirs leading up to the trailer release, beginning today June 22. Here's the press release in full...

GRAND THEFT AUTO IV TRAILER PREMIERES EXCLUSIVELY ON YAHOO!

Rockstar Games and Yahoo! Games will launch the world-premiere trailer for Grand Theft Auto IV in high-definition. As the first official full trailer release for the game, fans get an exclusive peek at action-packed game footage from Grand Theft Auto IV. Leading up to the trailer premiere, Yahoo! will celebrate Grand Theft Auto IV with special content including an interview with the creators behind one of the most popular video games of all time and exclusive screenshots from the forthcoming game.

Grand Theft Auto IV trailer premieres on June 28, 2007 at 12 p.m. EST. Get exclusive Grand Theft Auto IV content all week beginning on June 22, 2007.

After getting into contact with Rockstar Games, we learned that the trailer will in fact be available on Rockstar's official GTA IV website at the same time, and naturally many other sources as well. Also, according to them the coverage will in fact start on Monday June 25^th, not today as Yahoo! had indicated.

Link:Yahoo! Grand Theft Auto

Rockstar have revealed in their latest email broadcast that next week's trailer, titled "Looking for that special someone", will go online at 12:00 PM EDT on 28^th June. That's 5 PM in the UK, and 2 AM (June 29^th) in Australia.

This just in, the second trailer of Grand Theft Auto IV will be releasing on Thursday June 28^th. The title is "Looking for that special someone". Check out the new artwork below...

Related: Official GTA IV Website, GTAForums
Unrelated: Fan Edit of First Trailer

The suggestion by an analyst at Wedbush Morgan that Take Two's new management team might delay Grand Theft Auto IV, due to its close release to another big video game, as well as a strategy to impress investors by pushing it into a following fiscal year, created quite the buzz recently. However, when parent company of Rockstar Games, Take Two Interactive, posted their financial results for their second quarter of the 2007 fiscal year today, they made it perfectly clear that the game will retain its release date of October 2007. This was also mentioned during a conference call where the executives reaffirmed investors and fans of the series that they're going to meet their initial release date.

During the Q&A session of this conference call, several questions were asked regarding GTA IV, including whether we'll see a PS2 release of the game in the future. T2 replied by saying that this is unlikely, due to the fact that they're developing a next generation game and that once you see it you'll understand why it won't make its way to older platforms. So there you have it, officially! Something else that was revealed during the session, as well as partially in the press release, was that the two promised episodic episodes - both offering hours of new game play - will both be releasing during 2008. Interestingly, in the press release, this is listed specifically for the Xbox 360 version of the game. No word on extra downloads for the PS3 version as of yet, but rest assured it has yet to be ruled out.

During a question on this, it was revealed that while both versions of the game will be very close, they won't be identical experiences. We're not going to jump to any conclusions just yet, Dan Houser, Vice President at Rockstar Games, did say in a magazine preview that it is their goal to have no differences, and that there are no platform preferences. Maybe it will just be differing on things such as frame rate, graphics and controlling; the PlayStation 3's SIXAXIS controller has a motion sensor, offering unique experiences, while the Xbox 360's controller offers better control on vehicle acceleration with its right trigger, for instance. We just can't say yet, but we'll keep you updated on this! More GTA IV news to follow soon, we hear...

Press Release: Read Here
Discussion: GTAForums

Last month saw a number of previews from magazines such as OXM, OPM, and GamePro, and also from websites such as IGN, GameSpot, and Games Radar. With all this new information coming through, it was inevitable that one or two details would be overlooked, so today we would like to highlight a few of those.

• One of the less heard of previews - and in my opinion the best one so far - came from Kikizo. For all the diehard GTA fans out there, this is one you should definitely read. It includes every detail imaginable, from the song which was played on the car radio, to quotes spoken by pedestrians. "Do you know in Italy they get three hours for lunch?!", says one of them.
  
  
  • The song played on the radio was Sorrow Tears and Blood by Fela Kuti, which you can listen to below (note: this song may or may not be in the final version of the game - the soundtrack, we are led to believe, is still a work in progress, and this track may only have been temporary.)
    
    
    
    
  • Liberty City's size (in comparison with the San Andreas map) is also clarified, after Rockstar's use of the terms "geographical mass" and "scope" caused some confusion. Rockstar's Hamish Brown, who was talking to Kikizo, said that "it's definitely the biggest single city we've ever done", however, "that city isn't going to be the size of San Andreas, because that would be absurd, but if you take into account the level of verticality of the city, the number of buildings you can go into, and the level of detail in those buildings, then you're talking about a game that is similar to San Andreas in terms of scope.". So it doesn't get much clearer than that, Liberty City is not the same size as (or bigger than) San Andreas, as many people had interpreted at first.
  
  
  • The guys who saw the demo were also kind enough to answer some questions for us, regarding the positions of certain landmarks, so that we can hopefully (eventually) be able to produce a map. Adam (Doree) said that everything they saw (taxi depot, bridge, brownstones etc.) were within one or two turns of each other, and we are led to believe that Roman's taxi depot is situated to Niko's left (our right) in this screenshot.
  
  
  • Kikizo also today confirmed with R* that Grand Theft Auto IV is on track for release in late October, despite recent rumours which suggested the game could be delayed due to the release of Halo 3.
  
  
  » Click here for the full Kikizo preview!
  
  


• IGN and GameSpot are the most visited games websites on the internet, so when various websites posted GTA IV previews a couple of weeks ago, naturally theirs recieved most attention. ComputersAndVideoGames.com is another site who were lucky enough to see the game in action, and they managed to provide something which no other site could: street names. We recently learned that Liberty City will have every one of its streets named, and CVG were able to note down a few of these during their short tour of Liberty City. These were Masterson Street, Oakley Street, Tulsa Street, Cisco Street, Delaware Avenue, East Hook, and Rotterdam Hill.


• Carney Island Pharmacy - this is quite an old discovery, but a great one nevertheless by geomy from our forums, and one which I don't think many people noticed. In the screenshot below, you can see that the pharmacy is called Carney Island Pharmacy, which suggests that Carney Island is the GTA 4 equivalent of Coney Island. Carnies, for those who aren't aware, are carnival workers who are generally disrespected. It makes sense for the Coney Island equivalent to be called Carney Island, since Coney Island is famous for its amusement park.
  
  
  

Remember to register free at our forums to take part in GTA IV discussions and contribute your own findings.

We have updated our artwork gallery with a few new images - check it out!

Thanks to GamePro for these.

US magazine Electronic Gaming Monthly recently sent a photographer to NYC to try to match the GTA IV screens shot for shot, and enable comparison. Some of the results are outstanding, it's definitely worth the read, so if you can find this magazine in your area be sure to pick it up. These are the shots which were compared..