Vice City Stories UK boxart, price

Rockstar shed a tiny bit more light on Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories this week, revealing that it will cost $49.99 in the US and £34.99 in the UK, and releasing the box artwork for both territories.

The game's due out on PSP in October (17th in the US and 20th in Europe), but Rockstar's been pretty tight-lipped about it so far, other than to say the game will feature "a new storyline, new missions and gameplay" - the same line it took with the PSP's Liberty City Stories, of course.

The UK box art (pictured) suggests that at least a couple of familiar characters will be returning - again aping the style of LCS, which was set before the storyline of Grand Theft Auto III, and featured turns from younger versions of characters like Donald Love.

Indeed, there are plenty of parallels between LCS and VCS - the concept, the release timing, the developer (Rockstar Leeds) - and this has led to suggestions that it will follow its predecessor onto PlayStation 2 after a spell of PSP exclusivity.

Rockstar hasn't answered our questions about that yet. If it follows the LCS pattern though, expect VCS to retail at full price on PSP and reappear later for a budget-like figure on PS2. Indeed, Rockstar billed LCS on PS2 as a chance for the larger PS2 installed base to play the game for the first time, so unless PSP sales go up by about 80 million in the next 12 months we'd be very surprised by its continued absence from PS2 shelves.

Particularly, of course, since Grand Theft Auto IV is still over a year away, and on next- rather than current-gen formats, and therefore unlikely to see its sales cannibalised by the earlier release of a PS2 VCS.

We'll let you know more about Vice City Stories when they write it down for us on big cardboard signs and wave it in front of our faces so we don't have to move much.