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With a single logo image, Rockstar Games has seemingly begun teasing an announcement on the future of the Red Dead franchise.

A wordless tweet (below) features the Rockstar logo on top of the mottled red texture used in art for Red Dead Redemption, leading many to believe the announcement of a sequel is incoming.

Following the tweet, Rockstar posted a similar image as a news story on its Newswire website, and changed the avatars and banners on its Twitter and Facebook pages to match the series' black and red motif.

A Red Dead Redemption sequel has been rumoured for some time, following the apparent leak of the game's map (tellingly featuring the city of New Bordeaux, the setting for fellow Take-Two published game, Mafia 3). That same leak suggested the game would be a prequel, and be set slightly to the east of the last game's setting.

Take-Two recently announced that Rockstar was "of course hard at work on some exciting future projects that will be revealed soon."

The last time Rockstar announced a new game - Grand Theft Auto V in 2011 - it used a similar tactic, saying very little initially and releasing a first trailer the week after. However, that announcement did come with a game logo and a date for the trailer, so it's by no means assured that this reveal will be handled in the same way.

Of course, there's also chance that this could be a current-gen re-release of Red Dead Redemption, in the vein of Grand Theft Auto V. Redemption was recently made backwards compatible on Xbox One, leading to a sales rise for Xbox 360 copies of 6000%.

We awarded Red Dead Redemption a massive 9.7 review when it arrived in 2010, and went on to name it the 29th best game of all time. Its lasting effects have been huge, going beyond even games to influence other media - Jonathan Nolan named it as a key influence on the new Westworld TV series, for instance.

As soon as we learn more, we'll update this story.

From IGN