GTAIV to sing The Ballad of Gay Tony this fall

Second Grand Theft Auto IV expansion will arrive as $20 Xbox Live download or on $40 disc bundled with Lost and Damned; will focus on high-end nightlife, Mafia intrigue.

Earlier this month, rumors surfaced that the next downloadable episode for Grand Theft Auto IV would be titled "Blood and a Four Leaf Clover" and would possibly deal with the Irish Mob. Today, that bit of speculation self-immolated when Rockstar Games used its quarterly earnings report to reveal that the add-on to the free-range crime game would in fact be subtitled The Ballad of Gay Tony.


Due out this fall, the second Xbox 360 exclusive will focus on Luis Lopez (pictured), the criminally minded assistant of Anthony "Gay Tony" Prince, associate of the Ancelotti crime family in GTAIV. Prince should not be confused with the game's most flamboyantly homosexual character, Niko Bellic's war comrade Florian Cravic aka Bernie Crane.

Both Prince and Lopez were featured in the "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend" mission in GTAIV, and the latter also popped up in the "Museum Piece" mission featured in both the original game and the first expansion, The Lost and Damned. The title of the achievement granted for completing "Museum Piece" in GTAIV, "Impossible Trinity," had led some to suspect Lopez was the subject of the second expansion.

Unlike its predecessor, which focused on Liberty City's grimy underworld, The Ballad of Gay Tony will examine more upscale after-hours activity, promising an "overdose of guns, glitz, and grime" according to Rockstar. "This episode's focus on high-end nightlife contrasts with the biker gangs portrayed in The Lost and Damned, whilst giving us a lot of new gameplay possibilities," said Rockstar Games founder Sam Houser in statement.

The Ballad of Gay Tony will be released on Xbox Live this fall for $19.99/MSP1600 and requires the original Grand Theft Auto IV to play. It will also be available as part of a disc-based title, Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City, which bundles it with The Lost and Damned and does not need GTAIV to play. Contrary to other rumors, the compilation will be exclusive to the Xbox 360 and will retail for $39.99 this fall.