Some very exciting news about the PC version of GTA IV has surfaced in this recent first look article on IGN:

The nice thing about the PC version is the game will constantly be recording what’s going on. So if you pull off a particularly epic car crash or string of kills, you can hit a key to get the game to pull up the last 30 seconds of gameplay either in single or multiplayer modes.

From there it’s possible to edit the footage, adding filters, and fades and cut it up wherever you want. You can then take those videos and mash them together in the montage editor, then upload it to the Rockstar Social Club so the community can check it out.

Sounds similar to what I’ve heard about the machinima tools built into Halo 3, perhaps a bit more robust. It will be interesting to see if Rock Star attempt to make it difficult to get the footage out of the game for production pipelines other than the one specified here to their official community. But regardless, it’s an encouraging sign from a game that, just a few months ago, we thought very possibly would never make it to PC in the first place.

A little bird tells me someone is already researching and laying the groundwork for a machinima-related user mod!