It’s called the snowball effect. One site says something, another picks up on it and says something else and within an hour you’ve got a confirmed release date for GTA IV: The Lost And The Damned without anyone at Take-Two, Microsoft or even Sony having any idea themselves. The start of this was PSW magazine claiming that the motorbike-based expansion for Grand Theft Auto IV was only exclusive for 6 months, which led to other sites sticking 180 days onto that of the original release date and, well, the rest is (potted) history.

The truth is that Microsoft paid $25 million apiece for 2 exclusive content packs, which would only appear on the Xbox 360, and despite the magazine suggesting that the exclusivity deal expires in August and that the “content will arrive on the PS3 once the deal has run its course” Microsoft have flat out said to Gamespot that “the [GTAIV] episodes are exclusive to Xbox 360″ ruling out any chance of a port. Sony hasn’t replied on the subject, and Take-Two have just said the usual “No Comment.”

Interestingly, whilst this is the first we’ve heard of the so-called “6 month window”, Take-Two still haven’t, to our knowledge, divulged official concret sales figures for Xbox 360 sales of The Lost and The Damned,  so we have no idea whether or not Microsoft simply paid too much for the episodes, and whilst the official line is “No” it’s clear that getting these episodic downloads on to as many platforms as possible would make the most financial sense.  Whether that means on the PS3 and whether that means it’ll be in August we have to doubt.  Here’s to E3, then.