THE latest add-on to the crime game Grand Theft Auto IV (GTA IV) features a 15-second scene of full-frontal nudity by a male character - and the Media Development Authority (MDA) is all right with it.

The add-on, titled The Lost And Damned, premiered on Tuesday as the first game expansion available exclusively on the Microsoft Xbox 360 game console.

Online reports say that the nude scene comes a third of the way into the 15- to 20-hour-long game, which allows players to take on the role of criminals.

It is the first instance of full-frontal nudity in a mass-market game, though other games have featured half-naked women or off-screen sex.

Mr Ernest Khoo, head of video games and media content at MDA, said that whether full-frontal male nudity is allowed depends on the context in which it occurs.

In this expansion pack, he said, the depiction is 'non-sexual and can hence fall within the M18 rating', which is also the rating given to the original GTA IV. He added that with the M18 rating, only those 18 years old and above will be buying the game and its expansion pack.

Going by the video game classification system MDA introduced last year, games for online download do not need to be sent for classification before sale here.

The expansion pack, which has to be played with the GTA IV game disk, is released directly by its publisher Rockstar Games and is available only at the local Xbox Live online store for 1,600 points or $33. GTA IV distributor IAH Games said that more than 20,000 units of the game were sold here on both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 platforms.

In 2007, before the games classification system took effect, the MDA banned the game Mass Effect because of a love scene between two female characters. It later reversed the decision and put an M18 rating on it.