I have a strange affinity for brutalism. It sucks you in, engulfs you in its stature, kills your spirit in such blunt, obvious ways, that I can’t help but be wowed by in all its oppressiveness. As an architectural styling, it is also supremely opportune for sick parkour tricks, something Léonard Lemaitre (Babbdi, Straftat), Nathan Grange and Niels Tiercelin all deeply understand with the volumetric VHOLUME, a “first-person parkour adventure set in a dystopian brutalist city where bureaucracy turns a simple task into an odyssey,” which now has a demo.
The CEO of Take-Two Interactive has denied ongoing rumors that Grand Theft Auto 6 will be a digital-only release upon its initial launch.
This comes from Variety, which spoke to CEO Strauss Zelnick today ahead of the company’s Q3 2026 earnings release. When asked if subsidiary Rockstar would delay the release of physical copies of GTA 6 until 2027 to avoid leaks, he replied, “That’s not the plan.”
Rumors of such a physical delay emerged late last month, when an alleged insider industry source shared that Take-Two had no plans for a physical edition of the game at release due to concerns about physical copies falling into hands early and leaking online.
Notably, the report suggests that physical copies could be delayed into 2027, or delayed just a few weeks, which would make Zelnick’s answer somewhat unclear. IGN reached out to Take-Two to get more clarity on what his statement meant, and was informed that Zelnick’s statement was denying any delay plan at all, not just a move to 2027 specifically.
GTA 6 is still set for release on November 18, 2026, a date that Zelnick reaffirmed confidently to us today, alongside plans for Rockstar to spin up its marketing machine this summer. The game has already suffered from multiple leaks, both of development footage and of its first trailer, alongside a number of AI-generated fake leaks. We also spoke to Zelnick today about Google Genie ahead of the company’s Q3 earnings report, in which Take-Two announced it had brought in net bookings of $1.76 billion for the quarter, and that it’s raising its expectations for the year to have net bookings between $6.65 billion to $6.7 billion.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
It’s undeniable that for throwback 3D retro aesthetics, the original PlayStation and Nintendo 64 are the consoles that most people try to emulate. So I’m always quite chuffed to see a game that takes its visual cues from more recent consoles, like, say, Bel’s Fanfare, a very 3DS-era looking Zelda-esque game where you play as a little demon girl who works as a cleaner on a strange, massive ship.
Last week, Google announced Project Genie, an AI-powered virtual world creator still in its infancy that seemed to spook a number of video game investors. Following the announcement, stock prices of companies such as Take-Two, Roblox, and Unity took a noticeable dip, seemingly due to a belief that Genie was going to mostly or fully replace user-generated content down the line. But at least one of those companies’ CEOs isn’t ruffled by the price drop: Take-Two’s Strauss Zelnick.
Speaking to IGN today ahead of the company’s Q3 earnings call, Zelnick responded to my question about whether or not he saw Genie as a threat to Take-Two’s business. He doesn’t. Quite the contrary, he sound pretty positive. Here’s his response in full:
“This company and its products were built upon machine learning and artificial intelligence more than 25 years ago. That’s the story of this business; we use computers to create what we do. So we’re energized and excited by these new tools and the prospects that they bring. We have actively embraced new AI, I said so when we spoke about it in the last couple calls. [Author’s note: I ask Zelnick something about AI most quarters as news-relevant, here’s a summary from 2023 of what has been his consistent stance.] In fact, we have hundreds of pilots and implementations [of AI] across our company including with our studios. I think tools are what drive additional innovation in what we do, drive efficiency, and drive creativity, and that’s our three-part strategy.
“I think the confusion in the marketplace is somehow that tools equals properties…and tools and properties are very different things. Creators use tools to make amazing entertainment, and of course that will never change, and once you make amazing entertainment you have to market it worldwide, and the people who are best at marketing entertainment worldwide are big, significant entertainment enterprises with the balance sheet to actually support those launches, companies like us. So I feel more optimistic than ever that new technology is going to allow us to supercharge our business.”
In the past, including in the aforementioned 2023 conversation with Zelnick, I’ve asked him if he thinks generative AI will ever be able to create a GTA-like game wholesale, and his response has always been that it won’t. But I asked him today if the appearance of Genie had changed anything for him; it hasn’t.
“I don’t think theres any tool by itself that you can press a button and make a competitive property,” Zelnick said. “Some romance novelists for example are using AI tools to write certain parts of their book, but they still have to come up with the concept, the characters, and the structure. I don’t think you’re going to find hit movies, hit novels, hit songs, being entirely created with technology with no creator interaction, it’s just not the history of creativity. So I think perhaps people are confusing tools and technology with hits, and they’re really different things, and I would never want to underestimate the importance of human genius, even with fantastic tools. I think fantastic tools unlock human genius to do great things.”
Okay, but what if those fantastic tools, available now to anyone, are used to make a clone of a GTA game? Does Zelnick have any intellectual property concerns? Sort of, sure, but he’s seemingly of the mind that it’s better to work with the community than against them.
“We protect our intellectual property and we are respectful of toher people’s intellectual property,” he said. “At the same time we’ve allowed a lot of users to engage with a lot of our games and of course the FiveM business is an example of that. User-generated content can be and already is a big part of what we do around here. I also feel that user-generated content sort of stands side-by-side with professionally-generated entertainment. For example, YouTube is a huge business, but it represents about 12.5% of overall linear entertainment consumption. 87.5% is still old-fashioned, professional content made by human beings.” [Take-Two cited Activate Consulting as the source of this stat following the call.]
We also spoke to Zelnick about his confidence in GTA 6’s release date, and Rockstar spinning up marketing for the game this summer. In today’s earnings report, Take-Two announced it had brought in net bookings of $1.76 billion for the quarter, and that it’s raising its expectations for the year to have net bookings between $6.65 billion to $6.7 billion.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
Stardew Valley celebrates its 10th anniversary later this month. Yes, really. On 26th February 2026, ConcernedApe’s monumental farming sim will turn a decade old. It came to Switch in 2017 and, in the time since it’s release, has sold millions of copies and has consistently received a number of big free updates, with the next one — update 1.7 — on the horizons.
And, speaking to IGN ahead of the game’s big birthday, Eric ‘ConcernedApe’ Barone gave us a little tease of what to expect from the upcoming update, and they’re related to children and marriage.
It never ceases to amaze me all the different types of games that designers can create from the same source material. One property that exemplifies that in recent years is The Lord of the Rings. Last year, we took a look at The Fellowship of the Ring Trick-Taking Game, and now the adventure continues with the next entry, The Two Towers Trick-Taking Game, designed by Bryan Bornmueller and published by Asmodee. Whether you played the previous game or not, it’s time to don your leather armor, because The Two Towers is well worth picking up.
As the name implies, The Two Towers Trick-Taking Game plays like your typical trick-taking game, with players competing to win hands of cards – referred to as tricks – by playing and following a special suit that is led at the start of each round. What makes The Two Towers (and its predecessor) unique is that it’s a purely cooperative game.
While I knew this going in, having not played The Fellowship of the Ring, I wasn’t entirely sure how this was going to work – but in a few moments, it quickly became clear, and I found it rather clever. In order to progress, each character has to succeed in their respective goals, such as the Gimli player being required to win six mountain-suited cards or Boromir winning two tricks before the Black Tower card is played, and no more afterwards. What makes The Two Towers (and the previous game) a cooperative experience is that, while you are still competing against other players to take the tricks, the team is working to complete every one of the active characters’ goals.
Included in the small box are 19 chapters to play through, though “scenarios” would be a more apt term to describe them. Each of the chapters gives you a number of options. You have different playable characters to choose from. You can play either a short or long version of the chapter. You can even add in new characters or objectives. With short missions, you only need to complete a single game with all players successfully completing their goals. Long missions require you and your friends to play through multiple games back-to-back in order to complete all the possible characters’ objectives, with losing scrapping any progress you’d made so far (though you can just opt to replay those characters too).
What makes The Two Towers (and its predecessor) unique is that it’s a purely cooperative game.
The Two Towers is billed as a standalone expansion, but a standalone “continuation” may be more appropriate, which would make sense considering the source material. If you played The Fellowship, The Two Towers will feel incredibly similar. There are a couple of new types of cards, including the Orcs, which can only be played when you can’t follow, can never win a trick; worst of all, if you are forced to lead with an Orc, you all lose the chapter.
The White and Black Tower cards are also new, with each one always winning the trick they are played during but canceling each other out if played during the same one. The White Tower also fills in for the One Ring from the previous game, with whoever is dealt the card assuming the role of Aragorn and the first hand’s leader.
Individual games are pretty quick, with a typical short mission only taking up maybe 10–15 minutes. The length of longer missions, since they are composed of multiple full games to complete, fluctuate depending on how many games you end up needing to play. The short turnaround makes this a great option to bust out whether you only have time for a quick-playing game, or you want to do a marathon and get through a bunch of chapters in a single go over the course of an afternoon.
I appreciate when games offer that sort of flexibility. These short game times are helped along with the overall small footprint the game takes up, both in terms of its box and tablespace. As someone who loves to frequent my local tavern much like a hobbit, the fact that the box can easily fit into a backpack or purse is a nice touch.
My experience with the trick-taking genre has been mostly with straightforward, competitive games like Euchre, where I’ve only had to deal with navigating around a trump suit. I’ve found myself enamored with The Two Towers and its cooperative approach. Celebrating a shared victory with the entire table thanks to a clutch trump on the last hand to secure the win has a vastly different feeling than pulling a surprise trick in Euchre that wins a game for just your team. There is also no feeling quite like being forced to play an Orc card and losing it all in Euchre, either.
From a visual standpoint, I adore the stained glass aesthetic of all of the cards and artwork, and busting this game out at my local brewery, its visuals have caused more than a couple of fellow tavern visitors to stop and ask, “What’s that?!”. The cards themselves almost garnered more glances than our random outbursts cursing orcs (but only just).
There is a solo and a two-player mode, and while I only dabbled in the solo mode, my wife and I enjoyed the two-player variation. This variant features a third game-controlled player whose hand of cards is placed in a reveal pyramid, with only cards that aren’t covered up able to be played. It reminded me a lot of 7 Wonders Duel, but I enjoyed it more than managing multiple hands in solo mode. To be fair, though, I’m not much of a solo board game player in the first place.
As much as I have enjoyed actually playing The Two Towers Trick-Taking Game, my favorite part of the game has surprisingly been the moment each new chapter scenario is revealed. As someone who loves fantasy books, and especially The Lord of the Rings, I always get a kick out of seeing how the next moments of the book will be represented, what new character cards are pulled, and what we have to do next. Much like Fellowship, once all of the chapters are complete, a repeatable mode rule is there to let you and your group play afterwards, coming up with challenging character combinations and goals as you want. And for those who own Fellowship, there are rules to mix the two games’ characters together, though both games’ cards have unique backs so you will always be able to separate them back out again.
For those who own Fellowship, there are rules to mix the two games’ characters together.
My main critique, and a minor one at that, is that I would have appreciated heavier strategic elements. Even with the various goals of the characters and twists of the chapters to keep things interesting, I would have loved some aspect that lends itself more to strategy than the more luck-based nature these sorts of games lean toward. But even this complaint is more a “wouldn’t it be neat if…” sort of wish.
After playing The Two Towers Trick-Taking Game, I was instantly searching online to get myself the Fellowship version, as I just wanted more. The cooperative take on the trick-taking genre, mixed with beloved characters and the stories of J.R.R. Tolkien, meshes wonderfully into a solid and replayable package. That it is a cooperative game makes this a solid choice to introduce the genre to folks who haven’t tried it out, but if you aren’t a fan of trick-takers at a mechanical level, I’m not sure this will win you over. Still, thanks to its small footprint and easy setup, The Two Towers Trick-Taking Game is an easy recommendation, and a must-get if you loved the Fellowship version.
Blizzard Entertainment is getting ready to showcase a sneak peek at “huge reveals” for Overwatch with a Spotlight event – and it’s all happening in less than 24 hours.
Last week, the company announced plans to deliver updates for games like World of Warcraft, Diablo, and more directly to fans with a series of showcases throughout late January and early February, and all eyes are on the team behind its controversial hero shooter to see what the future holds. There are plenty of rumors going around regarding what will be shown during the February 4, 10 a.m. PT / 1 p.m. ET show, as players look forward to seeing what comes after Overwatch 2 Season 20: Vendetta.
As of last week, however, there is one big question on everyone’s mind: Why did Talon take control of Overwatch? Blizzard issued a hostile takeover hotfix last week, changing all iconography from the familiar Overwatch logo to that of the in-universe antagonist faction, Talon.
It’s been an unexpected, unexplained villain arc that’s continued through to today, with even official social media accounts affected by the changes. With confusion in the air, it would be strange if Blizzard didn’t talk about Talon during tomorrow’s showcase, so we’re hoping to find out what role it might play in Season 21.
“Overwatch Spotlight is a shared moment with our community, for our community,” a recent blog post from the Overwatch team says. “A chance to see where the game is headed, hear directly from the team, and step into the next chapter side by side.”
Meanwhile, several clues have the community expecting a more fundamental change for Overwatch 2. Specifically, fans across the internet believe this so-called “next chapter” will see the number 2 dropped from the Overwatch title altogether.
Speculation began when Blizzard announced the event last week, as audiences noticed the Overwatch logo featured on official artwork was missing its 2. It’s led many to assume the first-person live-service game could either soon drop the number, or that tomorrow’s showcase should cover information outside of Overwatch 2 itself. Theories for the former started to hold more weight when players seemed to find evidence suggesting its story-centered Invasion Bundle had dropped the two from its name, as well.
The hero shooter, which first launched in 2016 and will celebrate its 10-year anniversary this year, went through a major revamp in October 2022 that saw it transformed into Overwatch 2. It gained three new heroes – Sojourn, Kiriko, and Junker Queen – a visual overhaul, gameplay changes across its dozens of heroes, and a lot of hate, as players criticized its unstable launch and the controversial adjustments to its monetization strategy.
Many of the more problematic changes have been reverted or altered in the years since launch, with 6v6 queue options, additional heroes, map adjustments, and even loot boxes all added within the past year alone. It’s resulted in a small resurgence for the game, as players turn up as Blizzard attempts to steer toward a brighter tomorrow.
Another talking point players are hoping to see brought up includes what could be in store for next Season, such as potentially new maps, another collaboration or crossover, Perk reworks, and a theme. Fans are also hoping to see what its next hero may look like after Vendetta was added in Season 20, though the Overwatch team typically launches just one hero every other season, so we may have a slightly longer wait in that regard.
The last time the studio put hype like this behind a showcase was last year’s February event, suggesting that whatever the developers have planned for tomorrow will likely be huge. Like the 2025 Spotlight, Blizzard has parternered with a long list of some of the biggest streamers for this year’s show.
Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He’s best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).
The developer behind Dispatch — the superhero game that’s censored on Nintendo Switch — has said it is “legally unable” to explain why it is unable to launch an unedited version of its game in specific regions — as CD Projekt Red did with Cyberpunk 2077.
“This is the key point,” AdHoc added. “Nintendo has content guidelines. Our game didn’t meet those guidelines, so we made changes that would allow us to release on their platform. That’s what happened here. Honestly we thought this would be obvious since we’re the devs that released the fully uncensored version of the game on other platforms.”
While AdHoc has stated that this explanation was obvious, it has not been able to explain why Cyberpunk 2077 released unedited in most countries around the world, while Dispatch did not. Indeed, many fans have called for Dispatch to get the same treatment, with a censored version released in Japan, where the country’s strict rating board has been blamed for not allowing the game to launch unedited.
Now, AdHoc has responded on this point too — if only to say it is prohibited from explaining the situation in more detail.
“AdHoc is legally unable to provide further comment on why separate SKUs were not possible for different regions,” the company said in a statement to GoNintendo, adding that there was “no possibility” for an uncensored physical edition either, and that it had no physical edition plans to announce.
The purpose of a Tamagotchi is to have a tiny, portable digital pet with you at all times that you can feed and feed and feed until it grows into something slightly bigger, different, a new creature almost. It’s generally a sweet, albeit potentially irritating (the beeps…) little micro-game that may cause a touch of stress, but certainly no feelings of fear. In Full Bloom, however, asks “what if your Tamagotchi was actually a blob of an organism with nothing but a mouth that you must continuously feed… or else…”
