It seems that Rockstar's own Vice President of Creativity, Dan Houser, has something to say about the recent boom in casual gaming. Before you ask, no, he actually appreciates what the Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS are doing - but as far as casual games are concerned, you might as well color him unimpressed. Check out what Dan said in the full article and see what it means to you.

In the video games industry, many of the respected names include Rockstar Games and its Dan Houser. So when the guy talks, you better listen.

Recently, the guy was interviewed about marketing titles and moving away from the annual sales bottleneck during the holiday season. You can read about these after the jump!

BBC's report on a mysterious game which marks the brink of a step change in what games consoles are capable of in terms of storytelling and immersion sent waves that excited Sony PlayStation 3 fans. Of course, Surfer Girl wasted no time riding the wave and revealing that this title could be Heavy Rain. Check out the full article to learn more.

With Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto IV (Xbox 360, PS3) winding up for its highly anticipated release this April, Dan Houser revealed a couple of juicy tidbits about some of the game's critical and "defining moments". Read all about it in the full article.

If you got excited about yesterday's rumor that there was a Grand Theft Auto  movie in the works, you will be disappointed to know that Rockstar Games has gone on record and denied speculations about the matter.

Aside from that, Rockstar also made clear that they are not interested in any project concerning GTA outside the video game industry. More on this after the jump!

Bully (Xbox 360, Wii, PS2), the "Dennis the Menace simulator" game from Rockstar Games that went through its fair share of controversy (considering Rockstar's history for it), recently won the Best Videogame Script at the BAFTA awards.

The script for Bully (also known as Canis Canem Edit in Europe) was written by Dan Houser and Jacob Krarup.

A few months before it starts wreaking havoc on the Microsoft Xbox 360 and the Sony PlayStation 3,Grand Theft Auto IV details have already begun circulating throughout the gaming community. We already know quite a lot, but GamePro Germany has a little bit more to add. Check these out and see if any of these details ring a bell:

1. Multiple animations when breaking into cars- Rather than the usual punch-and-throw animation, Rockstar says that there will be several more realistic scenes witnessed when Niko tries to hop aboard a vehicle he intends to steal. This includes breaking the window open with an elbow shot and looking to check for potential witnesses while he hotwires a car.

2. Less unrealistic gameplay bells and whistles- Developers say that unrealistic markers and arrows will be minimized and other in-game devices will be employed to give direction to players. Do we smell GPS here?

3. Every street will have a name- Developers are still deliberating on the prospect of whether or not they should give every street a name which will be displayed onscreen when you enter it. Another issue which we already know of is still undecided: Whether or not the city will be fully accessible from the beginning or not.

4. Xbox 360 vs PS3- Dan Houser of Rockstar says that the idea is to not have any hint of bias towards any of the platforms. He says there won't be any differences between the versions for each console.

5. Downloadable extras- Rockstar reveals that there will be some freebies, but there will be some things you have to pay for too.

We certainly like what we're hearing and from the looks of it, we may have a more realistic crime spree than ever. We've already seen the screens, so we know it'll look good. The only thing left to find out is that if Niko and his city stacks up to his older brothers from consoles past.

 

CVG reports that Dan Houser, Vice President of Creative at Rockstar, said in the latest issue of Official Xbox Magazine, that the reason why they decided on having a New York-esque Liberty City for the highly anticipated GTA IV, is because it adds an element of content to the game. He expounds:

We've always wanted to do New York properly... With GTA III we were dealing with so many technical issues that we didn't really think trying to make somewhere like a real place was important at the time and then we discovered later that gave an added element of content to the place.

We've got a full time team of researchers and photographers in the office in New York who get emails from the artists in Scotland saying, 'hey can you find out that this building's like, or what the traffic flow's like around here?' or the designers want to find out how the law systems work. We wouldn't be as confident doing a next-gen game the way we wanted, somewhere we didn't have a base.

Now, what really got our attention in this one is his comment about Rockstar researching New York traffic. Accurate traffic? Add accurate traffic to the passage of time in-game, and one can probably safely assume that the Taxi-cab missions (if they're still there) will be a lot harder now.

That particular issue of Official Xbox Magazine is currently on sale.

A lot of people have been clamoring for more details on Grand Theft Auto IV. Fortunately, Official PlayStation Magazine Australia has released some more tidbits on the game and they are quite interesting.

For those who saw the demo, Niko (the main character of the game) passes an ATM machine and the option to access his bank account appears. Now, no official word has been given on this yet, but the initial impression is that it will be possible.

The GTA IV physics engine has been tweaked as well which should allow you to actually hear "vehicles passing by with their radio turned on." Hmm, not bad at all. Speaking of driving, the controls have been "tremendously" tweaked and enhanced. They also gave other details on the game which are listed below.

Here are some of the other details on the game from GTA4.net:

• When selecting a contact on your mobile phone, a list of several commands are made available to the player, such as "meet me here," etc.
• Playing the single player game through co-operative mode is not possible, however there will be a co-op mode in addition to all the other unknown multiplayer modes.
• According to Dan Houser, VP of Creative for Rockstar Games, they haven't yet figured out if GTA IV is going to spark off another set of GTA games connected to it, and they're currently just focusing on this single game. He does say he "would have a certain confidence" setting GTA outside the United States, such as England, in the future.

Amidst all the good news, we have a little bit of bad news for fans of San Andreas Stories. Houser said that there are no plans for a PSP version of the game. So, while a lot PSP owners will probably still be waiting for a PSP release, it's unlikely that it will be coming anytime soon.

A couple of days ago, we got a preview of Grand Theft Auto IV (PS3, 360) from The Official PlayStation Magazine (OPM). Today, we get the details from its Microsoft counterpart in publication, The Official Xbox Magazine (OXM). The gta4.net website was able to scrape out the new info from the publication and drafted the list of details that you guys might be dying to know.

We've paraphrased the whole list below:

• GTA IV is now 66% complete.
• Crosshairs pop up when Niko pulls out a gun. This could imply manual aiming in the game.
• When using your mobile phone, the camera will show a zoom-in panel of the mobile phone's interface at the bottom-right corner of your screen - allows you to view your address book for "jobs" and view other contacts.
• Exterior fire escape staircases are accessible; some meetings will happen high up in skyscrapers too - which could lead to you throwing people off the building from that height. Rawr.
• Hand to hand combat will feel "much more natural" and is currently being reworked.
• Camera angles can be changed even while in a car, but this feature is still being experimented on. Rockstar promises to make it more practical and functional though.
• Getting to control boats has been confirmed, steering them is "really nice." Huh?
• Central Park has also been confirmed to be in the game. The fictional name though hasn't been revealed yet.
• Dan Houser confirms that Liberty City in GTA IV is the biggest GTA city they've done so far. He says that details are a big thing.
• Houser also says that they're evolving how the radio works into the game, as well as how police behavior reacts to the things you do.
• The Rockstar developer studio in Scotland has been asking the NYC studio about more specific information on buildings and traffic flow in the Big Apple.
• There's an "Eastern European-sounding" dance station in one of the radio stations.
• Rockstar's "69" humor is back. There's a sign for a "69th Street Diner" and a building called "Twitchins" - that's GTA's version of Brooklyn's Domino's Sugar Factory. Easter eggs!
• "Fun ridiculous" weapons are also in the game because they don't really want to be too "naturalistic".