One of the biggest games available on any gaming system is Grand Theft Auto. The franchise has proven to be one of the top game franchises going. The game has raised more than a bit of ire in the industry as groups claim it is too violent and promotes violence in the real world. Despite some opinions, the game is still one of the most successful around.

Rockstar has announced new DLC for GTA IV that is Xbox 360 exclusive. The new content is called Grand Theft Auto: The Ballad of Gay Tony. This is the second episode in the Episodes from Liberty City expansion and will launch this fall.

One of the biggest game launches this year was Grand Theft Auto IV. The game has been out for a while now, but will still probably be one of the most popular titles for holiday giving. Shortly after the game launched Rockstar announced that it would be bringing downloadable content to the platform.

The catch for many gamers is that the DLC will be for Xbox 360 players only. Rockstar has now announced the release date for the first DLC pack. The download content will be called The Lost and Damned.

According to a report in the NYT, Grand Theft Auto IV reached sales of over $500 million in its first seven days on the market. Take Two Interactive said the game sold approximately 6 million copies worldwide since its launch last Tuesday.

The numbers significantly exceeded expectations of many analysts who expected to see around 5 million copies sold in the first two weeks. Take Two also stated that 3.6 million of those copies were sold the first day of the launch globally for around $310 million in sales. This number even exceeds the numbers we saw for the Halo 3 launch for both first day and first week sales.

Grand Theft Auto IV went on sale worldwide today and many retailers such as Best Buy and GameStop opened their doors at midnight last night to meet fans across the country who created long lines to be one of the first to get their hands on a copy and spend the rest of the night playing. The GTA 4 launch from Take Two is expected to see sales that will rival that of last year’s Halo 3 release, with numbers nearing $400 million for around 6 million copies sold around the world.

The Grand Theft Auto 4 game is available for both the Sony Playstation 3 and the XBox 360 which greatly broadens the audience. Some speculate that the launch delay from last October also allowed more people to have time to buy the latest generation of game console and built more anticipation for the launch. Take Two says the delay was due to technical hurdles that needed to be overcome.

Rockstar has an edited version of Grand Theft Auto IV to release in Australia this month in order to obtain a MA15+ for the game with the Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC). This may not come as a big surprise to those in Australia, but that doesn’t make it any less frustrating.

To make it even worse, Rockstar has not only confirmed that Australia will be getting a censored version of the game, but they have chosen not to divulge what parts of the game have been cut to obtain approval from the Australian game classification system - our guess is the hookers, again. This is no doubt done to leave the benefit of the doubt with consumers that parts of the games they like most will still be there.