E3 06: Grand Theft Auto IV coming to 360, PS3 in 2007

LOS ANGELES--In one of the most shocking announcements at E3, Microsoft revealed that it quite literally stole away some of Sony's audience. One of the PlayStation's most notoriously popular franchises, the Grand Theft Auto series, is confirmed to be coming to the Xbox 360. Previous editions of GTA were released exclusively on the PlayStation 2 in October, and were later ported to the Xbox. Now we know that Grand Theft Auto 4 will be hitting the Xbox 360 on "day one," alongside the PlayStation 3 version of the game.

At today's Microsoft pre-E3 conference, Peter Moore pulled back his right shirt sleeve and revealed the familiar Halo 2 logo. Duping the audience into thinking that a new Halo was about to be announced, the Englishman then pulled back his left shirt sleeve, which revealed a tattoo that showed a Grand Theft Auto IV logo.

Grand Theft Auto IV will be available on October 16, 2007, in North America, and October 19 in Europe.

Moore did announce that Microsoft and Rockstar have signed an exclusive agreement to provide episodic content via Xbox Live, though he did not specifically limit the content to GTAIV.

Following the announcement during the Microsoft press conference, Rockstar Games issued a press release confirming that GTAIV would be hitting both the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 simultaneously in the fall of 2007. The brief announcement specifically confirms that Scotland-based Rockstar North, creators of the previous GTA titles, will be developing the game.