Ken Levine (Creative Director, Ghost Story Games), creator of the BioShock series, unpacks how Judas will be an experience where players influence how relationships and the story unfold: "Characters have always been the driving force in every game we've ever made. Whether fighting beneath the ocean to assassinate Andrew Ryan or escaping a city in the sky with Elizabeth, these personalities have always been at the heart of our stories. But what if you could choose between who to befriend and who to stab in the back? With Judas (coming to PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S), we wanted to craft an experience where these decisions and how the story unfolds is up to you. Because you, as Judas, are the driver of every event in a story with a new cast of characters to get to know—and change—in ways you haven't experienced before in our games.

In Judas, we give you a whole new world to explore: the corridors of the Mayflower, a spacefaring city whose citizens are trained to spy on one another and tear each other apart for the slightest offense. Where machines control every aspect of business, art, and government. The ship's leaders tried to turn you into something you're not: a model citizen. And you sparked a devastating revolution to tear it all down. Do you want to fix what you broke or leave it all to burn? That's a decision only you can make."

Tales of the Shire—a "The Lord of the Rings" game—has been teased by Private Division. The introductory trailer does not contain any gameplay footage, but it indicates that a "cozy" Hobbit-related living habitat will serve as the main environment. A live action sequence shows a character adding yet another drawing to a sketchbook filled to the brim with illustrations of Hobbit life and key Shire locales. Take Two Interactive's indie specialist offshoot will be publishing the game, while Wētā Workshop is listed as Tales of the Shire's main development studio. The latter is best known for creating special effects and props—most notably on the Peter Jackson directed The Lord of the Rings and Hobbit film trilogies.

Wētā Workshop's move into video games seems to be an odd one—but Take Two Interactive and its development partner did announce an unnamed The Lord of the Rings title last summer—Amie Wolken, head of interactive at Wētā Workshop stated (at the time): "It's a privilege to create a new game set in Middle-earth, especially one that's so different from what fans have played previously. As fans ourselves, we're excited for gamers to explore Middle-earth in a way they never have before, and introduce new fans to the magic of The Lord of the Rings." Private Division has set a very general 2024 launch window, with Tales of the Shire arriving on PC and consoles.

Kerbal Space Program 2's first patch is due to drop this week. Creative Director Nate Simpson, on March 10, announced a specific date: "As to the timing of Patch One... QA is thoroughly testing the build right now, and as soon as they give us a thumbs-up, we'll release it. Right now, our goal is to release that patch next Thursday (March 16th). Provided QA does not uncover any show-stopping bugs over the next few days, that date should hold."

He also highlighted the possibility of a slight delay to the patch, in the event of bugs being found before the official date of issue: "If they do run into something unexpected that needs to be fixed, that date will slip. We have done a fair amount of hand-wringing around whether we should announce the target date for this patch when there is a non-zero chance of a delay, but we know this topic is very important to you all, so we're doing our best to keep you all in the loop." He then mentions that another set of improvements are being worked on. "We've also already completed a nice queue of fixes to go into the second patch, but we'll talk more about that after we've got the first one out the door."

It's official: Take-Two Interactive recently revealed that Grand Theft Auto V has now sold over 100 million units since it was launched in 2013. That's an impressive feat not only for that cold number, but also for being able to sell copies with a game that is five years old. On May Take-Two announced that the game had hit 95 million copies sold, for example, so sales rate are really good after all this time. the original game has evolved and grown with continuous updates that have allowed players to enjoy new content on a regular basis. These sales have also been helped by key factors such as the progressive reduction of its price, of course.

The announcement was part of the financial results in Q2 for Take-Two Interactive. The company has seen net revenue growing 11% to $492.7 million compared to the same period of last year. It's interesting to see how digital-delivered net revenue grew 18% to $358.4 million. This represents 73% of total revenue currently, something reasonable if we consider the success of Grand Theft Auto V, Grand Theft Auto Online, NBA 2K18 and NBA 2K19. But again, selling over 100 million units is something that only some very special games can do: only Tetris and Minecraft have done that previously.