The ToysRUs.com promo image appeared today on the front page of the video game section of the company’s online store. The image shows 360 and PS3 boxart for Grand Theft Auto IV: Episodes From Liberty City links to a page selling just an Xbox 360 version of the compilation. The Episodes disc contains the previously-released GTA IV expansion: The Lost and Damned as well as the forthcoming Ballad of Gay Tony.

Both episodes have been considered Xbox 360 exclusives since news broke in 2007 that Microsoft had entered into a deal with Rockstar Games and parent company Take Two Interactive. But all parties involved have long been unclear as to whether the exclusive is limited to a finite timeframe, leaving PS3 fans hope they’ll get the episodes too.

A Rockstar rep was able to confirm that the Toys R Us image is a mistake. But the company declined to answer the question as to whether the episodes will ever come to PS3.

Thanks to everyone who sent this tip in.

A total of 250 new Gamerscore points can be yours upon the release of Grand Theft Auto IV: Episodes from Liberty City or the downloadable episode, which follows the adventures of Luis Lopez, the man employed by the eponymous Gay Tony. If that’s all you care to know about the expansion, tread carefully. The full list of Achievements is potentially spoiler-filled.

Gone Down – 5
Complete all base jumps.

Diamonds Forever – 5
Complete the Trinity.

Four Play – 10
Hit a flag with a golf ball four times.

Bear Fight – 15
Win the L.C. Cage Fighters championship.

Catch the Bus – 15
Dance perfectly in both Tony’s nightclubs.

Snow Queen – 20
Complete 25 drug wars.

Adrenaline Junkie – 25
Freefall for the longest possible time.

Maestro – 30
Finish the Ballad.

Past the Velvet Rope – 45
Score 80% or above in all missions.

Gold Star – 80
Score 100% in all missions.

Meet Yusuf Amir, who’s a successful businessman gangster and rival of Gay Tony. Yusuf enjoys dancing in his tightie-whities, but that’s not why this is NSFW. Huge F-bomb about 10 seconds in; it might rupture your chaste workplace speakers.

Rockstar’s news release accompanying this video describes Amir as “The affable, cutthroat real estate and construction kingpin of Liberty City. Yusuf’s vast wealth fuels his over-the-top lifestyle and desire for women and expensive toys, two of the Arab-born’s unquenchable vices.”

Those who have played Grand Theft Auto over the years know that 2008’s adventure of Niko Bellic was, relatively speaking, one of the calmer GTAs. Ballistic bank heists and motorcycle chases in subway tunnels notwithstanding, Niko didn’t parachute from skyscrapers or drive military vehicles down Broadway. That, with style, is where the next GTA IV episode comes in.

I played and watched a few missions from Rockstar Games’ next and final extension of Grand Theft Auto IV at the company’s New York City headquarters yesterday. The new episode, which Rockstar says will be similar in size to the last one, offers a few notable game design tweaks but will most likely stand out to series fans as a modern way to reintroduce some of the eccentricities not seen in a console GTA since the PlayStation 2-era Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

Bodyguard Luis Lopez, star of the Ballad of Gay Tony, is committed in this episode to help his friend and employer, the beleaguered nightclub owner, Tony Prince, resist the encroachment of some crooked gangsters. That’s the set-up for a wild ride.

Rockstar is pitching this episode as an experience on the other side of Liberty City’s velvet rope, an indulgence in the excesses of the super-rich and likely not-so-nice. So it was no surprise to hear that there’s a champagne mini-game in Gay Tony, nor to witness a mission that involved stealing an attack helicopter from the back of a yacht before using said chopper’s rockets to blow up some boats—nor to try a mission myself that had Luis walking along the top of a moving, elevated subway, using a shotgun with explosive shells to eliminate swarming police helicopters. That last mission’s motivation? We’re doing it to steal a subway car for a rich guy who wants to build a re-creation of Liberty City in the Middle East.

San Andreas would let you eat enough burgers to make its hero slovenly. It would hide a big purple sex toy for you to find and use to bludgeon people. There isn’t any sign that Gay Tony is taking things quite that far. Instead, the new episode defines its colourfulness within the lines of Liberty City’s demented wealthy. I witnessed one cut-scene that had Luis considering a job for a man with so much money that he has a super-hero costume, a TV running the end-credits of GTA IV and a big bird sculpture in his penthouse apartment…a man who has people upstairs making noises Luis mistakes for the filming of a pornographic movie…a man who delivers a life lesson that culminates with the instruction that an individual must always do what money dictates even if that dictation involves the loss of one’s own legs.

For this eccentric cast Luis might machine-gun his way through the upper floors of the MeTV building, where, instead of my old MTV offices from my last job, we find on one high-rise floor the offices for the crooked owners of Liberty City’s hockey team. Extra credit goes to the gamers who can shoot one of these no-good franchise owners in such a way that he crashes through a window and down many stories to the Liberty City version of the patio outside my old company’s cafeteria. And more extra credit to the gamer who can follow that with a parachute jump out of the skyscraper and onto the back of a flatbed truck.

Rockstar’s previous episodic expansion of GTA IV, The Lost and Damned, expanded the gameplay options of the base game by allowing and encouraging players to ride through the city and fight with a gang of other characters providing back-up. The twist in this episode is that Luis’ missions will include optional goals—ideal completion times, ideal damage taken, bonus objectives like shooting that guy out of the window or landing on that truck. A mission can be completed without them, but Rockstar is enabling and encouraging gamers to re-launch the missions after having completed them, as players could in the DS’ Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, and to strive for those goals. Rockstar reps couldn’t tell me what the rewards for perfect completion might be.

I used to work with a guy who was almost depressed about the lack of access to a military tank in Grand Theft Auto IV. He liked the new game but missed the older games’ wildness. It’s for people like him that Rockstar is now promising in Gay Tony access to an armoured personnel carrier with a 50-calibre gun, more advanced and devastating helicopters and even a more potent arsenal of firearms, which will be made available to Luis early in the episode. But I think the addition that will most excite my former co-worker is Luis Lopez’ parachute. Find a high spot in Liberty City, equip the parachute and jump. Players can experiment with it freely, though be warned that it can’t be used infinitely. You’ll need to replenish your parachute supply. Gay Tony will also provide access to 15 parachute-jumping challenges, five of which involve trying to bullseye a target after leaping off a building, five of which involve leaping from helicopters and five of which involve leaping from motorcycles.

Rockstar estimates that this new episode will be similar in size to the previous one, The Lost And Damned, an episode that took me 12 hours to reach its narrative conclusion. The new game won’t have any new multiplayer modes but will support existing ones. The radio stations will be beefed up once again, with more music, new DJs and new talk. There will be new in-game TV programming. Some missions will intersect with the previous GTA IV releases, allowing gamers to again encounter Niko Bellic and Lost and Damned protagonist Johnny Klebitz. Some side missions will be randomly generated, enabling Luis to do tasks for people who hang out in Tony’s clubs. The story missions will have a more Algonquin/Manhattan focus than those of Lost and Damned.

Rockstar always keeps some secrets out of its GTA previews. That headline-grabbing full-frontal nudity in The Lost and Damned was not featured in any preview I got of that episode. Who knows what other eccentricities will be in this one. But what I’ve seen so far of what Rockstar says is this last-planned GTA IV episode is wild enough to wrap the saga of Grand Theft Auto in entertaining and eccentric fashion.

Grand Theft Auto IV: The Ballad of Gay Tony will be available on October 29 both as a $26.40 download through Xbox Live or on a $69.95 Xbox 360 standalone disc called Grand Theft Auto: Episodes From Liberty City that also included The Lost and Damned and does not require ownership of GTA IV. As with the previous expansion to GTA IV, Rockstar has only announced this new episode for the Xbox 360 and gave no word that it is ever coming to the PlayStation 3.

First Gay Tony Screenshots [GTA4.net]

In contrast to Grand Theft Auto IV’s seedy biker gang expansion The Lost and Damned, The Ballad of Gay Tony is said to focus on the glitzy “high-end night life” of Liberty City. The second Xbox 360 exclusive episode will put players in the role of Luis Lopez, confirming previous rumours, as his part-time hoodlum duties are supplemented by full-time work for nightclub impresario Tony “Gay Tony” Prince.

According to the official announcement, “players will struggle with the competing loyalties of family and friends, and with the uncertainty about who is real and who is fake in a world in which everyone has a price.”

Grand Theft Auto: The Ballad of Gay Tony is slated to release on Xbox Live this Fall for $US19.99 USD or 1600 Microsoft Points.

While the latest Xbox 360 Elite package packs in a copy of Grand Theft Auto IV, it doesn’t appear to offer a complimentary copy of Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned as we’d hoped. Instead, the birthday bundle packs in two limited edition stickers, one featuring the GTA IV logo, the other featuring the Liberty City Swingers team logo.

Microsoft reps still have not yet responded to requests for clarification on the when, where and how much for the Xbox 360 Elite “Limited Anniversary Edition” bundle, but we’d expect an announcement soon. Given the dual-language nature of the package, this could be limited to our neighbours to the north, but that’s just speculation.

Take-Two Interactive has shipped over 13 million copies of Grand Theft Auto IV, the company announced today, revealing sales of more than $256 million for its holiday 2008 quarter and a $50 million loss.

GTA IV figures were dated to January 31st, prior to the release of the first downloadable episode The Lost And Damned. Both sales and losses were up from the same quarter from the previous year, with sales up by $16.4 million, losses increasing by $12.4 million. Take-Two said that higher marketing, legal fees and R&D costs led to the increased losses.

Grand Theft Auto IV sales reached 10 million in its first four-and-a-half months on the market, with the next 3 million taking five-and-a-half months.

The parent company of 2K Games and Rockstar Games pointed to quarterly sales led by Grand Theft Auto IV, Carnival Games, NBA 2K9 and Midnight Club: Los Angeles.

2K’s Carnival Games franchise, which includes Carnival Games, and Carnival Games MiniGolf, has shipped over four million units worldwide since launch, Take-Two noted.

Take-Two reported a loss of $15 million the previous quarter, but chairman Strauss Zelnick called the first fiscal 09 quarter “better than expected.”

In anticipation of next week’s launch of the first downloadable episode for Grand Theft Auto IV, The Lost and Damned, Rockstar Games has unleashed a bigger, more leathery taste of the expansion’s motley crew.

The trailer not only features some fantastic metal flashbacks, but also a few guest appearances from familiar GTA IV faces, including our dear old Mr. Bellic. I particularly like the little sneer that Johnny Klebitz busts out at the halfway mark.

Xbox Live Marketplace got the trailer a little while ago, if you’re looking for another way to watch. Who’s planning on grabbing the download next Tuesday?