Microsoft promised that the first of Grand Theft Auto IV’s downloadable episodes would be arriving this side of Xmas. Alas, it appears that Rockstar isn’t quite so certain.

Indeed, when asked by Variety.com whether the DLC would be coming out this year Rockstar founder, Dan Houser, admitted: “I'm not sure. It's going well. But we don’t know a date. We hope to be announcing that in the next few weeks. We're still figuring out a few things.”

Houser doesn’t get into the specifics, as you might expect, and with an announcement arriving “in the next few weeks” we could very well be looking at a release in 2009 thereafter. However, whatever’s going on behind closed doors at Rockstar we can be fairly sure it’s all for our own good. As Houser continues: We're more focused on quality than dates, always have been. But the development is going really good. It's shaping up to be something we're very proud of. That was our goal.”

Well, if it’s good enough for Rockstar to be proud of it has to be worth a little extra waiting time, right? We can‘t wait to hear the details in the forthcoming announcement either - even if it seems that Rockstar doesn’t want us to get too excited: “We want to give people a rough idea so their expectations are roughly in line. We don't want them to imagine it's this enormous thing that it can never be.”

Dammit, now we’re just confused! Ach, whatever, they’re just being coy and the DLC is bound to rock. It just might be a little late arriving, that’s all…