Ending all the constant speculation about the next installment of the Grand Theft Auto series, publisher Rockstar Games has announced that Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is indeed coming out. In the press release unveiled this morning, it was revealed that GTA: San Andreas will be an exclusive title for the PlayStation 2 and will be released on October 19, 2004.
In the past few months, the latest Grand Theft Auto continuously has been rumored as Grand Theft Auto: Sin City, Grand Theft Auto 5, and Grand Theft Auto: Anything You Can Think Of. To make things even more confusing, Rockstar Games registered those names for internet sites in addition to other titles like Grand Theft Auto: Bogota and Grand Theft Auto: Tokyo. Unless these are potential future cities for the franchise, these names were most likely done to create red herrings for the press and fans of the series.
In the original Grand Theft Auto, San Andreas was a city that was based on the likeness of San Francisco. Sections of the city in the game had names that were variations of the names of different Bay Area neighborhoods. With the hilly nature of the city by the bay, gamers might be seeing some more terrain than previous installments.
With more than 11.5 million copies of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and more than 10.5 million copies of Grand Theft Auto 3 sold worldwide, there's a lot of pressure to make the next installment live up to the name. Leslie Benzies, president of developer Rockstar North, acknowledged this by stating, "We are extremely humbled by the success of the Grand Theft Auto series and it has made us push ourselves further than ever to create a title in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas that will hopefully redefine the Grand Theft Auto series and revolutionize open-ended gameplay and video game production values."
http://ps2.ign.com/articles/495/495767p1.html
This should be official for anyone who questions where I got it from *cough*
*awaits first screens to see if they UPGRADE the visuals or not*