In the gaming industry, there are a lot of high-quality and extremely popular franchises, but among them, Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto is the biggest. The series, which has broken records through its latest full-fledged installment, Grand Theft Auto IV, has introduced a lot of innovation in terms of story and gameplay.

We've been talking a lot about the owner of Rockstar, Take Two, which has recently delayed BioShock 2, pushing it into 2010, in order to further polish up the title. Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter now shares his opinion about the move and, more importantly, reveals that, according to his inside sources, a brand-new Grand Theft Auto game is currently in the works at the Rockstar North studio.

“Management also told us that the team at Rockstar North is highly motivated to get the game out, and that the team understands that its highest payday will come from working on GTA instead of any other game,” Pachter says. “When we do the simple math, we conclude that the next installment is likely to be completed by some time in 2010. Although given the frequency of game delays, it is not clear that it will necessarily come before October 31, 2010.”

But there is one thing that Pachter is sure of, and that is that Take Two will push for a new GTA game before 2012, when its contract with Rockstar expires. “However, it is clear to us that the next version of GTA will arrive before the end of Financial Year 2011.”

Pachter projects that, as the fiscal year will begin on November 1, 2010, the console install base will have grown by 60%, meaning that sales between 15 and 18 million units for the new GTA game will be assured.

Until we can know for certain, we can still look forward to the next pieces of GTA-branded content, in the form of the second Xbox 360-exclusive DLC episode The Ballad of Gay Tony, for GTA IV, and the PSP version of GTA: Chinatown Wars, which is already available on the Nintendo DS.