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Kotaku's got a great GTA IV rumor posted at the moment, clipped from a recent CVG print feature about Rockstar's upcoming new megagame Grand Theft Auto IV.

While you should probably take this latest info with at least a grain of critical salt, the original article was originally published under the watchful auspices of Microsoft -- a company presumably in the know as far their own DLC is concerned. The rumor going round is that GTA IV's downloadable "expansion" content (you know, the stuff exclusive to the Xbox 360) will be large enough in scope to constitute entirely new cities. From the article:

"Of course to call games as vastly ambitious as Vice City or San Andreas mere 'expansion packs' seems childish, but nevertheless, the downloadable content coming for the Xbox 360 version of IV has repositioned those games in just this way.

"[GTA IV's expansions] are to GTA IV what Vice City or San Andreas were GTA III. Yes, Rockstar is clearly hinting at new downloadable cities; and the chances of them being London, Vice City or SA again are slim to none. So that's new as in brand new. GTA IV's Liberty City is the beginning. Think about that and be excited."

If true, that'd be quite the coup for Microsoft, don't you think? Obviously at this point it's mostly just speculation, and of course nobody's actually saying whether these new cities will constitute anything more than roadside truck stops and wilderness or whether they'll be as full fledged as New Jersey.

Still, the possibility that the GTA IV equivalent to Vice City could be as simple and direct as a download-only bolt-on to the original game isn't so far-fetched as to be unbelievable. This is Rockstar that we're talking about.