Today Rockstar officially announced that Nico Bellic will be making the venture to Windows in the fall as Grand Theft Auto IV is confirmed for PC. Of course, we totally knew this already as a Take Two customer services employee accidentally revealed it to a couple of pranksters just over a month ago but still, at least it’s official now.

Hit the jump for some more info, including PC-exclusive features.

Apparently, it’s already looking and playing “beautifully on the PC”, according to Rockstar’s founder Sam Houser. He assured that GTA IV on PC will remain almost identical to the console versions albeit with perhaps some nicer-looking graphics since there’s a lot more potential power in a PC than a games console can provide. However, the press release issued by the publisher/developer mentions “newly expanded multiplayer just for the PC.”

What can these newly expanded modes be? More players in free-roaming? Bigger deathmatches? New modes and scenarios in the vein of “Bomb Da Base II” and “Hangman’s NOOSE”? I’m really hoping these expansions are more of the latter and less of the former: if “expanded” means “expanded player slots” then that’s just rubbish, to put it bluntly.

For something that’s coming out 7 months after the original release you might expect a little more than some extra players, despite how awesome it would be to have more than 16 players running around Liberty City at once. Some new scenarios taking advantage of larger rooms for games would be pretty cool: how about a 50 player-a-side gang war? Divvy that up again and you could easily have 5-way team deathmatches with 20 players apiece.

Even if it doesn’t go as far as 100 players, the potential offered by more player slots means team-based modes could be created from those currently without due to the small numbers (team racing anyone?) and even then some more modes supporting smaller numbers, such as the preset story scenarios, would be welcomed with undoubtedly open arms.

Either way, PC owners will be pretty keen to get their hands on GTA IV when it’s released for their platform of choice in the fall. And come on, admit it: you totally knew it was going to happen anyway.

GTA IV hits PCs in North America on November 18th and in Europe on the 21st.

Official: GTA IV on PC, gets expanded multiplayer – CVG

Tweet This Post