GTA IV to use Rockstar's Table Tennis engine

Reports originating from MTV News claim that Grand Theft Auto IV will use the same game engine that powered Rockstar's Table Tennis title.

Could GTA IV look this good?

An article on Gamefront reports on an MTV News item which revealed that the next instalment in the Grand Theft Auto franchise would be created using RAGE. Not to be confused with the zombiefying disease from '28 Days Later', RAGE stands for Rockstar Advanced Game Engine, and is the in-house developed engine that was used to power the recently released Rockstar Presents Table Tennis.

At this time the story hasn't been verified by Rockstar, but the engine certainly produced impressive visuals, albeit of a limited scale, when utilised in Table Tennis. A GTA title with visuals on par with those seen in Table Tennis seems highly unlikely, though that's not to say the engine isn't scalable in a way to cope with the large sprawling open cities of GTA.

We'll keep you posted as and when more information comes to light.