Rockstar Games bolsters its plans for late 2009 with a third major release announced for the back half of the calendar.

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The second "GTA" release of a young 2009, "Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars" is a game that feels like it has arrived from an alternate history of game development. Read more...

A new trailer for "Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars" debuted today. Huang Lee is here. Check it out.

Related Post:
'Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars' Preview - Tons of New Details

Over at MTV News, Stephen has filed a story about the "Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned" cut scene with full-frontal male nudity everyone's talking about, looks at some old Rockstar controversies and points out where you can keep up with Congressman Stubbs' day-to-day: Twitter.

Full-frontal male nudity in Rockstar's new 'Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned' is just the latest in a history of controversies surrounding the developers' games. But this new one is different from the Hot Coffee, "Manhunt," and "Bully" scandals of the past

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Exposing another glaring blindspot in my gaming resume, Rockstar has announced that a sequel to the (good?) 2004 PS2/Xbox Western "Red Dead Revolver" is coming to the PS3 and Xbox 360 this fall. More details and screens below. Read more...

Forget for a second that Rockstar Games released the almost-AO-rated game "Manhunt 2" on the Wii last year. (It didn't sell well anyway).

Rockstar owner Take Two hasn't really put much of its edgy content on the Wii. The 2007 and 2008 hits "BioShock" and "Grand Theft Auto IV," for example, both came out for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 -- but not the Wii.

Never fear, Wii owners. Take Two's CEO said during a financial earnings call today that he now wants to make sure that all the company'slabels -- Rockstar included, it seems -- figure out how to back the Wii. Read more...

Take a look at the first screenshots of the first expansion to "Grand Theft Auto IV."

USA Today reported last night that the first episode of "GTA IV" DLC, exclusive to the Xbox 360, is called "The Lost and Damned," and slated for release on February 17, 2009.

The article also said that the episode stars a new character named Johnny Klebitz, who's a member of Liberty City biker gang The Lost.

Take-Two Interactive and Rockstar Games confirmed these details in a press release, saying that further details will be announced soon. It is the first of two announced episodes, and it will feature a storyline that intersects with the original game, additional music and new missions, multiplayer modes, weapons and vehicles.

We've asked Rockstar about the price and the size of the download and will update you when we hear back.

[Update: Rockstar declined to comment further about the DLC at this time.]

For more images, make the jump. Read more...

Rockstar's Dan Houser said f--- it.

Nintendo said it doesn't exist.

And whatever it is, EA said that "The Sims" isn't it.

So what is "casual gaming"?

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the definition of "casual" is something "occurring without regularity," "occasional," "employed for irregular periods, "met with on occasion and known only superficially" and "lacking a high degree of interest or devotion" or "done without serious intent or commitment."

However, in gaming, the term "casual" is used to refer to a genre of games. But what really defines a "casual game"? Is it the core audience that plays it? Is it the kind of gameplay a title offers? Or a game's wide-spread appeal?

When Nancy Smith, Global President of "The Sims" at EA, was asked about the label "casual," she said, "I don't think of ["The Sims"] as casual. We were one of the first games that started to attract a broad audience. We were one of the first games that bought in women."

Meanwhile, Nintendo Europe's senior marketing director Laurent Fischer told CVG he thinks the idea of the casual gamer is a myth entirely: "For me, you are a gamer or non-gamer... I think most of you know that you can spend ten or twenty hours on an internet flash game and have not realised. The guy who plays these games regularly - he's a core gamer."

As for the word "casual," he said, "I don't like this word casual so much. Because people consider that casual needs to be something easy. If you're good at any game you can play at a high difficulty level. There is no casual gaming. There is just a different way to play."

Clearly, casual games are booming. Why are publishers suddenly uncomfortable with the "c" word? What do you think defines a "casual gamer" or a "casual game"? Should the term "casual" be embraced or tossed out?

"Grand Theft Auto IV," like its predecessors, is rated "M" for "Mature." That means that the game's content is only "suitable for persons ages 17 and older."

But we all know that won't prevent everyone under 17 from getting their hands on the game.

I recently talked to three teenagers who have owned and played "GTA" since well before the age of 17 -- with and without their parents' permission -- about their past experiences with "GTA" games.

One 15 year-old told me his parents don't allow him to play M-rated games without their approval, and "GTA" is strictly off-limits. However, he acquired "San Andreas" though a game-trading website, and they don't know he's been playing it:

"They would probably be more upset that I didn't listen to them first, and about the content second. In my defense, I feel that going to high school has prepared me for the content in M-rated games."

Read on to learn how these teens got their "GTA"s, what their parents do and don't know about it, and whether they plan to acquire "GTA IV" later this month...

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