"Grand Theft Auto IV" creators to release "Ballad of Gay Tony" this fall

Last year we wrote about how Grand Theft Auto IV, one of the the biggest and most popular narrative video games to come along in years, featured several gay characters (one of them an unfortunate target of the hero, another a colleague).

Now Rockstar games, the company behind the GTA franchise, the gay-inclusive Bully and others, is releasing an entire GTA IV game centered around a gay character this fall for download and packaged with another downloadable add-on game as a standalone disc (all for the Xbox 360).

In the game, players will portray Luis Lopez, an assistant to nightclub owner "Gay" Tony Prince. Now, how the gay character will be handled (or, really, if he even is actually gay) is yet to be seen, but the fact alone that the massive, mainstream-targeted game company is putting the word "gay" in the title of a chapter of its most popular franchise is a bold marketing move, to say the least.

In GTA IV, one mission involved going undercover on a gay chat room
 

We'll be following this one closely as  the release nears. For now, catch up on the other gay goings-on in Grand Theft Auto IV: Liberty City (which will tie closely into this new chapter) over here.