The Grand Theft Auto series has been nothing short of a worldwide phenomenon in the video game industry. The franchise continues to break records with its titles Grand Theft Auto 3 and GTA: Vice City. With a franchise as big as this one, there was no question that a sequel would be made. The real question was, when will the sequel be out? Today that answer is a bit closer to being answered.

At the 20th Annual Technology Conference in New York City the executive producer of Take-Two Interactive, Cindi Buckwalter, spoke out on the 2004 business plans. Take-Two interactive is the parent company of RockStar games, the publisher behind the GTA games. Within the business plan, Buckwalter revealed that the next installment in the series is being targeted for a Q4 2004 release. "In the back half of '04, Q4," she said, "we have targeted Grand Theft Auto 5 or the next version of Grand Theft Auto."

Details surrounding the game were not revealed. Take-Two CFO Karl Winters was cautious with her comments, simply stating, "I want to be prudent about our comments. We're very excited about the brand. We're excited about it. We're giving it a breather in the marketplace, and we think that it will all come together for us next year."

She continued to say, "The mountain top is continually higher," said Winters. "We had a lot of questions about how we could possibly create something that could compete with Grand Theft Auto 3. None of us who were sitting here a year ago would have suggested we would have the type of success we had with Vice City."

The question now, as Winters put it, is how will RockStar compete with a bar they set so high? We'll have to wait a year to find out.