235w ago - At the same BMO Capital Markets' conference last week in New York where he gave an update on upcoming GTAIV DLC and Chinatown Wars, Take Two CEO Strauss Zelnick offered a glimpse further down the road. In his "Negative Approach" blog for cnet, Dave Rosenberg related these remarks from Zelnick:

The Holy Grail is taking a business, already a very large and successful business that's focused on packaged goods... and turning that into a subscription business or a semi subscription business where we have an ongoing relationship with consumers, giving them products that they want. Who's better positioned to do that than the company that has the top franchises?

It isn't much of a stretch here to start connecting the dots. The Grand Theft series definitely fits the bill as a "successful business that's focused on packaged goods," and it's also the top of their franchise properties. And though delayed, the DLC plan for GTAIV offers an ideal test run for a "semi subscription" model along the lines Zelnick suggests.

Not that they needed more incentive, but Watching World of Warcraft once again flexing its muscle with the release of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion must spur them on that much harder.

Everyone asks, "Can a console game tap into the World of Warcraft meme?" and "what...

264w ago - Jack Thompson, the anti-GTA lawyer, has fumed at the production of the "murder simulator" GTA IV in a letter sent to the MUM of Rockstar boss Strauss Zelnick.

Thompson suggested that she should be "ashamed of herself" in the letter, which has been reported on in the Metro.

"The pornography and violence that your son traffics in is the kind of stuff that most mothers would be ashamed to see their son putting into the hands of other mothers' children," he ranted.

"Maybe you, Mrs Zelnick, were so taken by your handsome son that you spared the rod and spoiled the child. That would explain why he has brought you, by the way he presently acts, to shame."

He goes on to claim that experts hold GTA and Strauss' "entrepreneurial energy", in part, responsible for a "plethora of cop killings".

It gets better: "Your son, this very moment, is doing everything he possibly can to sell as many copies of GTA IV to teen boys. If you trained up Strauss to do this, then shame on you," he said.

We'd love to have been in Mrs Zelnick's 'How to Sell a Murder Simulator' classes.

"What you will see in your son's game," he added, "if this iteration is anything like its predecessors, is incredible interactive violence aimed at police offers (whom you can shoot in...