In a move that should come as a surprise to no one, Sony has announced that Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City will be arriving on the PS3 on March 30, 2010. The two expansion episodes, the biker-oriented The Lost and the Damned and the nightclub-centric The Ballad of Gay Tony will be available together on one disc that won’t require the original GTA4 to play, or as individual episodes downloadable from the PlayStation Store.

“Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City has been one of the most requested gameplay experiences by PlayStation fans, and we’re thrilled to finally bring the closing chapters of the GTA IV story from one of the biggest franchises in gaming to PS3,” said Rob Dyer, senior vice president of publisher relations, SCEA.

What Rob isn’t saying there is that PlayStation fans have been requesting this game, but not being able to play it, because Microsoft had handed RockStar Games a significant sum of money for a window of exclusivity on the two downloadable episodes, which is finally now expiring.

Now, while there will be quite a few people who will rush out and purchase the Blu-ray or the downloadable episodes, it really feels like too little too late for PS3 owners, who by now have likely moved well past the all-new Liberty City, and into the massive amount of quality titles that have been released since. How many of those will be going back from more GTA4 adventures compared to how many would have purchased the games if they’d come out at the same time as the 360 version. Did Microsoft’s cheque more than offset the potential lost revenue from the loss of PS3 sales?

For RockStar’s sake, let’s hope so.