Grand Theft Auto fans are going to have to wait a bit longer for the next installment. Take-Two Interactive announced Thursday that Grand Theft Auto IV would not be released Oct. 18 for Sony's PlayStation 3 and Microsoft's Xbox 360 video game systems, as originally planned. Instead, the game will arrive in spring of 2008, "due to additional development time required to complete the title," the company said in a statement .

Industry analysts had expected GTA IV to battle Halo 3- and perhaps Guitar Hero 3 and Rock Band- for the top-selling game of the year. The last GTA game for consoles, 2004's GTA: San Andreas has sold more than 14 million copies.

On his Level Up blog, Newsweek's N'gai Croal mused: "It will be interesting to see which publishers move their games out of the November crunch and into October now that the neutron bomb that is Grand Theft Auto IV will no longer be dropped in 2007."

Based on its Gamer Panel surveys of gamers' intent to buy, IGN GamerMetrics' estimated that Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Assassin's Creed will be the beneficiaries of the game's delay this holiday season.