Chris

Yeah they're real.

Yeah I'm still in two minds about it. On the one hand I loved the old-school button bashing cheats, I memorised so many from GTA III, VC and SA. But on the other hand, GTA IV's system of using the phone to store them was way more convenient. I'm curious as to why R* themselves decided to go back to it. I don't remember the phone system actually getting many complaints so I can't imagine it was from user feedback. Anyway, I've added all the known cheats so far: thegtaplace.com/gtav/cheats/

Can't say I'm surprised by this considering they specifically requested retailers don't break it. Having said that, what exactly will their punishment be? Apart from possibly fine the retailers I can't see what they can do. Preventing them from selling the game will only hurt sales.

Some lucky people have managed to get their hands on a copy of GTAV earlier than the rest of us, but the vast majority are still awaiting the game's official release on Tuesday. Some of the slightly more impatient among us will be going to midnight launches, there's thousands happening all over the world. Rockstar recently posted a great store finder for people in the US and UK, but it is by no means exhaustive, and obviously of no help to those outside these two countries. Below are some additional stores in a few other large countries, if you know of any others happening in your country, do let us know in the comments or tweet at us. USA Microsoft Store - Starting at 10PM on Monday night, Microsoft retail stores are holding launch parties where fans can compete for fun and bragging rights. Customers will enjoy food, swag, and raffle prizes. They can then pick up their copy of GTAV at midnight. Find your nearest store on MicrosoftStore.com/events. Walmart and Best Buy will be giving away some free stuff to people who pre-ordered. Walmart will be giving away a GTAV logo keyring while Best Buy will be giving away character posters (while supplies last). GameStop will also be opening most of their stores for midnight launches at 9PM, you can use Rockstar's store finder below or see their website for more details. See the store finder at the bottom of this post for Walmart, Best Buy and almost all other US store locations. UK GAME - Stores across the UK (including Northern Ireland) will be holding midnight launches, most will open at around 11:45 PM and should remain open until at least 1 AM. A full list is available on their website (and also in the store finder below). HMV - HMV rather unhelpfully never revealed which of their stores would be holding midnight launches, they did however say that "most of [their] flasgship" stores would be opening at midnight, so if you live in a big-ish city then yours should be open, might be worth checking during the day to make sure though. Blockbuster - I was not aware they still existed, but apparently they do, and it seems all their stores will be holding midnight launches. Full list on their website (and also in the store finder below). Tesco and Asda - Many of these supermarkets are 24-hour stores already so these are unsurprising, use Rockstar's store finder below to see if yours will be opening at midnight. Ireland Xtravision - A full list of midnight and early morning launches are available on their website. GameStop - Unfortunately they don't have a full list of stores, but they have confirmed many will be opening at midnight. Check with your local store to make sure. Tesco - Many Tesco supermarkets will be opening at midnight if they aren't already 24-hour stores, there's no list online so you'll need to check with your local store to make sure. Canada EB Games - A full list of midnight and early morning launches are available on their website. Australia EB Games - As long as you don't live in Western Australia you're probably in luck, many stores will be opening as early as 10 PM Monday night, those that aren't (actually all of them) will be opening nice and early at 8 AM on Tuesday. See the full list of stores on their website. Also, If you're in Sydney they are holding a massive party at World Square, with many top DJs performing. The first 400 customers will get free burritos! See this press release for full details. JB Hi-Fi - As well as being the cheapest place to buy the game ($89 AUD), you're also in luck as long as you don't live in Western Australia, many stores will be opening late Monday night after 10 PM or so. See the full list on their website. New Zealand EB Games - All stores opening at midnight, but some smaller stores will have their launch at a nearby larger store. Check with your local one to make sure. JB HiFi - See here. If you pre-ordered you should get a free poster when you go to pick it up, they're also cheap at $88 NZD. Stores in Albany, Botany, St. Lukes, Queen Street, Westgate and Wellington will be open at midnight. Rockstar's UK and US midnight launch finder

Yes.

Rockstar have just released what is presumably the final update to the official GTAV website tonight, and it's a pretty big update with lots of new stuff. First of all, the visitor's travelogue is now complete, with the final four sections now added. Travelogue Social Club Social Club members will unlock some exclusive features in Grand Theft Auto V – these include the unlockable Assault Sub Machine Gun, the blazing Annis Elegy RH8 sports car and unique haircuts for Franklin, Michael and Trevor to sport around town. Social Club members will also be able to share in-game photos (taken using the mobile phone) online via Snapmatic, Rockstar's parody of Instagram, and receive discounts on a variety of in-game purchases through Lifeinvader.com, the Facebook parody Rockstar launched just the other day. New Screenshots & Artwork

Polygon recently got the chance to interview Rockstar's VP of Creative Dan Houser, who talked in detail about making a game with three protagonists and switching between them. It's well worth reading the whole article, but he's a couple of excerpts we thought were interesting: To top that off, a new very high resolution artwork has come to light featuring Chop.

Back in 2011, we reported on some domains Rockstar had registered that we thought might be for GTA V. More recently, you may have noticed lifeinvader.com appearing on the official GTAV website, confirming our suspicions that it may be used for a teaser site. Today, Rockstar have launched an actual website for Lifeinvader, an obvious parody of Facebook. Clicking the logo or visiting the homepage will take you to a random profile on the site. You can login to the site using your Social Club details and "stalk" people there and comment, exactly as you do on Facebook. Many of the profiles contain screenshots, so spend some time browsing around and see what you can find. Interesting to see that you can stalk businesses for deals, we're hoping this actually applies in-game as it's an excellent point of integration.

Can't remember where I read it, probably somewhere in the mapping thread over at GTAForums, but they said the city of Los Santos (i.e. just the bottom half of the map) is twice the size of the entire San Andreas map. In any case, it looks like there is a ton of countryside to explore, and the city will be huge too. I don't think players are really going to appreciate this until they get in the game. And yes, to those who doubted earlier: this is legit, it's from the strategy guide. Rockstar did ask us to remove it at first if anyone posted it but since reversed their decision and it's now allowed. I think it had already spread too far across the internet for any sort of containment to be effective.

Game Informer recently got a hands-on with GTA Online, and have given a thoroughly detailed preview of it in their latest issue. We've summarised some of the new details below, and you can also read a brief overview of the 12-page spread on IGN. GTA Online is something Rockstar have been planning since GTA III. Now that the concept is real, they eventually plan to expand it to include previous and future worlds - "We wanted a world where people could spend years without getting bored of playing the same content over and over." When creating your character, you will choose the parents and grandparents, and lifestyle, this will determine your characters looks and starting statistics, which can be upgraded later. The world will be populated with your friends, your crew, and similarly ranked players from your geographical region. Alternatively, each player can be hand picked. You can play in "passive mode" where players can't kill you, but you become hostile when you fire your weapon. Pretty much all activities from the single player campaign will be available online, including heists, missions, robberies, assaulting gang hideouts, hijacking armored vehicles, races, as well as sports such as tennis, golf and base jumping There are over 500 missions available, some of which can be completed alone, others will require you to team up. All of the missions take place shortly before the start of the single-player game, meaning some familiar faces will make an appearance. If you make friends with the right people you'll also be granted bonuses (for example, biker gangs may offer mission support or a hacker can hide you on the radar in multiplayer matches). The point of the game is to gain as much money as possible, and use it to buy assets such as cars and houses Houses will have space for storing cars; cheap ones will have two garage spaces while expensive penthouses will hold up to ten. You'll want to visit ATMs often as rival players can kill you and take any cash you have on you at the time. If you do get robbed, you can put a bounty on the perpetrator's head and attempt to get some revenge. You can accept race invites from your phone to warp to the location, instead of waiting in a lobby. A lobby window will open up for some missions, allowing the crew leader to customize the time of day, weather, degree of difficulty, and the number of lives the crew has to complete the mission. Each player will select their role for the mission and receive specific instructions for that role. You will respawn if you die but it will count against your crew's lives. You can invite friends and crew members over to have a drink, call strippers, enjoy the view, and watch the Rockstar parody TV shows together. If one of your crew members is in a high speed chase, they will appear on Weazel News on the TV. Rockstar plans to continue creating new content for GTA Online and support it as a separate product from GTA V. Rockstar have employed a dedicated team to help with stress testing the game in the first few weeks. Player created race and deathmatch modes will be available at launch, with more complex mission creators coming later. You'll need to play for about an hour before you access a certain rank enabling you to create your own content for the game. Creation mode lets you choose the type of race (Normal, GTA, or Rally), weather, radio station, police interference, and ambient drivers. Deathmatch creation mode lets you choose the type, timer, and kill count, spawn points, weapon types, and extra props and vehicles. Rockstar will be playing and ranking the user-created content on the Social Club, allowing players to easily see the best content.

Just a week to go until we finally get our hands on GTAV. Serial great-GTA-artwork-producer Patrick Brown has celebrated by drawing this brilliant picture simply entitled "Launch Piece": Greatest Game Series of the Decade GTA fans: GameSpot are holding a Greatest Games Series of the Decade competition, and Grand Theft Auto is currently losing out to Elder Scrolls. Head on over to GameSpot and vote for GTA!

No he means he pre-ordered online, for delivery, as opposed to reserving it in-store for pick-up himself. He has cancelled his delivery pre-order because he doesn't believe it will arrive on release day and is instead going to a midnight launch.

Someone who is an expert at yoga apparently. I'd also never heard of that term before now but then again I don't know anyone who does yoga...

You Americans can't complain, you get a chance to win that Banshee!

I don't think that many people will enter

Time now for a competition for our readers from the U.K. musicMagpie, the company that lets you sell back your unwanted CDs, DVDs, games and other tech, are giving you the chance to win a Limited Edition Azurite Blue PlayStation 3 console plus a copy of the GTAV Collector's Edition! Want to be in with a chance of winning that? All you have to do is answer one easy question: name the three main characters in GTAV. That's it. Super simple stuff. 1st prize: Limited Edition Azurite Blue PlayStation 3 console + GTA V Collector's Edition (includes: Collectable Steelbook with Exclusive Artwork, GTA V New Era Snapback Cap, Blueprint Map, GTA V Security Deposit Bag with Logo Key + Digital Content) 2nd prize: Copy of GTA V Special Edition (PS3) (includes: Collectable Steelbook with Exclusive Artwork, Blueprint Map + Digital Content) 3rd prize: Copy of GTA V Standard Edition (PS3) To enter, head on over to musicMagpie's GTA V competition page for full details and instructions (you'll need a Facebook account), and remember you must be over 18 and live in the U.K. You have until 17th September to get your entry in. Full terms and conditions are here.

Rockstar have very kindly sent us over this new GTAV screenshot exclusively for The GTA Place. It's Trevor having a fight with a car window! Cheers R*! Our friends at the following fansites also received exclusive screenshots: GTAV.net GTAWH GTAGaming GTAForum.nl GTA-Series GTATurk GTAInside iGTA5 GTANF GTAPro GTA-Xtreme.de GTA-Scene.de GTAVision TheGTABase RockstarBase RockstarWorld RockstarNetwork RockstarWatch RockstarNexus RockstarResource Rockstar98

While we haven't been posting much of Rockstar's street marketing on here, you no doubt will have seen a lot yourself, perhaps even in your hometown, the majority of the art is stuff we've already seen. Today we have some brand new character art which has gone up in Auckland, New Zealand. GTAForums member 10 Percent Guano took some great photos of the new ones. Now that these artworks featuring Amanda, Simeon, Tao, Tracey and Wade are now out in the open, we can expect high res digital versions to be released by Rockstar fairly soon. Remember there is now just over 7 days until we get to play GTAV!

According to an article in the Scotsman today, so called "industry experts" are predicting that GTAV should bring in over £1 billion ($ 1.56bn) for Rockstar, by selling 25 million copies in its first year. The game has a development and marketing budget totalling £170 million, an absolutely massive amount for a videogame, so it doesn't take a mathematician to work out that this will mean a huge profit for Rockstar. There isn't really any new information in the article, it does however state that the game world is 49 square miles (78km2) which, if true, shows just how massive it really is. The majority of the article talks about the game from Scottish perspectives, given the game's roots in the small country. It touches on the sheer amount of detail that goes into making the game. Read the full thing over at The Scotsman.

The Guardian's Matt Hill has today posted his rather lengthy interview with Dan Houser (Hill claims the transcript ran to over 10,000 words). The interview covers a number of topics, from Houser's meticulous nature in studying cities used in GTA games, to his self-admitted unstructured and disorganised being. The main theme of the interview, though, is the comparison between videogames and movies, and how the former is constantly getting more and more relevant these days. Hill points out how Grand Theft Auto IV made $ 310m on its release day alone back in 2008, that was a world record at the time in any kind of media. Houser also talks about how Grand Theft Auto couldn't really work as a movie, or even a TV show, as they'd lose too much in terms of storytelling - GTAV is 100 hours long, so when you think about it like this, it's easy to understand why it would be impossible to condense it into a 2 hour film. A videogame is the perfect medium for certain types of storytelling and immersion, and Grand Theft Auto fits squarely into that. Plenty more quotes like that can be read in the full interview over at The Guardian.

Well, the UK is, geographically speaking, a fairly small country. Shipping with first class postage as GAME said they would should mean the vast majority of customers will receive the game on release day. Other retailers such as Amazon offered pre-orders with release day delivery guarantee. So I imagine they may even ignore that request from R* in order to have greater chance of meeting that guarantee they offered. Rockstar's own Warehouse also guarantees release day delivery on pre-orders.

Rockstar have updated the official GTAV website today with more sections to read about in the Los Santos travelogue: Security, Fitness & Entertainment. There's also 8 brand new screenshots and a new artwork which you can see at the end of this post. New Screenshots New Artwork