Take-Two Interactive just released its latest earnings report, and it's not exactly pretty. Softer-than-expected sales during the holiday season have hurt Take-Two's bottom line, with the publisher adjusting its full-year projection downward. CEO Strauss Zelnick blamed customers searching for discounts and only spending money on blockbuster titles as the reason why games like Marvel's Midnight Suns and New Tales from the Borderlands were commercial flops.
But even as Take-Two considers a $50 million reduction in spending (that won't include a "broad-based reduction in force"), Zelnick is looking towards a brighter future. That future includes Judas, the new game from BioShock creator Ken Levine, which will reportedly arrive sometime before March 2025.
In an interview with IGN, Zelnick was asked if Judas would be part of the 87 games that Take-Two plans to publish before the end of its 2025 fiscal year, and he said "yes" unreservedly. IGN then followed that up with the logical question of whether he might expect delays to Judas or any of the other 87 games on offer, with Zelnick replying that he's still "optimistic" that most of those games will arrive on time.
"We did have some slippage in the last few years," he said. "We feel really stable right now. I feel great about our upcoming schedule. Of course there's always the possibility of some slippage but the teams seem to be functioning really well and I'm optimistic about delivering great titles to the marketplace on an ongoing basis."
Judas was introduced last year in a spectacular trailer at The Game Awards. Set on a "disintegrating spaceship" and starring a colorful cast of robot characters (or at least some of them), Judas features a female protagonist that can use a high-tech glove to shoot bolts of lightning or summon fire. Judas is planned for PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store.
In the same interview, Zelnick talked about the importance of Grand Theft Auto 6 and how the recent leaks were "really frustrating and upsetting to the team." You can read more about tis "personal" and "emotional matter" here.