Rockstar announces Midnight Club 3

Rockstar has announced Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition for PS2 and Xbox, due out in both Europe and the States this Christmas, currently undergoing development at the publisher's San Diego branch (better known in the past as Angel Studios). There's currently no word on PC or Cube versions.

Since you're no doubt wondering, the title reflects a partnership with American car lifestyle magazine DUB - a partnership that Rockstar believes will infuse the game with "an unparalleled level of expertise and understanding of the latest and hottest trends in the automotive industry and street customisation scene". Maybe we'll get a "Max Power Edition" over here, eh?

More important to us though is the question of how it plays, and what MC3 has to offer that Electronic Arts' extraordinarily popular Need For Speed Underground series has to fear. And sadly it's a question that Rockstar isn't answering just yet - there's no mention of specifics in the announcement release, just a lot of backslapping from different members of the Rockstar and DUB crowds, which we won't bore you with here.

Rockstar hasn't even confirmed a repeat of last year's online options, which put Midnight Club 2 on both PS2 Online and Xbox Live. If we are in for a repeat (which seems likely), support for Live could help propel the third title into the lead on Xbox, assuming EA continues its dillydallying over whether to back Microsoft's celebrated online service.

We certainly hope it does - last year's title, in which players drove around realistically mapped versions of Los Angeles, Tokyo and Paris in all sorts of cars and on bikes "tearing it up" in the company of other professional street racers. Given the disinterest meted out to the original when it launched alongside the PS2 back at the turn of the millennium, the entertaining sequel caught most of us rather off-guard - and expectations are now high for the threequel.

Obviously with E3 just around the corner, there's a chance we'll know a lot more about Midnight Club 3 by this time next week. Then again, Rockstar managed to "unveil" Max Payne 2 at last year's show without actually "unveiling" anything (although they did "unfurl" the world's largest banner - currently being used to help cover up the hole in the ozone layer), so who's to say? If Rockstar manages to ditch the rather boring level of secrecy surrounding its new titles next week, we'll let you know how it's shaping up...