Since the moment a game's release date is announced, all kinds of teaser screenshots, trailers and other sorts of footages (in-game or not) appear throughout the web. But some games enjoy such a great dose of popularity, that the company sets up special sites or special TV programs with countdown timers for them, to create suspense. That's Rockstar's case with their highly acclaimed and controversial GTA series, which is coming close to its fourth installment in the new (3D) series. We all know that Rockstar has set up a GTA IV trailer, releasing March 29 at 6:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. What everyone doesn't know is that the developer has set up a 30-minute TV advert teaser as well for the Grand Theft Auto IV trailer. This was brought by Xemu, through Game Set Watch:

"I think Rockstar's approach here of using TV even at this early stage makes a lot of sense given the wide target audience of the game. Having a countdown via off-hour TV spots is pretty intriguing and may lead some people to the web based version..." They add that "...the levels of recursion here are pretty astounding." And they're right if you think about how much TV ads cost to make and run, not to mention a half hour one. What do you think Rockstar are doing? They're doing 2 things for sure and that is:

-GTA fans sitting on the floor, knees under chin, biting their nails off, staring at the screen that currently shows...let me check... 3 days, 13 hours and 45 minutes, keeping the suspense on and going;
-attracting non GTA fans, by showing the teasing countdown timer for a good 30 minutes, making them think: "Wow, this GTA game surely is something if they can afford a 30 minutes ad for it".

Anyway, whatever intentions Rockstar might have, they've got some serious guts, I'll give them that. Planet Grand Theft Auto assures fans that "the first GTA4 trailer releases on March 29 at 6:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Also Grand Theft Auto IV, the game, is still on track for releasing in October on the 16th, 2007 in North America for the PS3 and Xbox 360, 'cause it's not a PlayStation exclusive as you might have already heard.