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Take-Two announced the Earthrise expansion for Sid Meier's Civilization VII featuring a space program. By Aaron Hall Gaming Content Writer | Journalist Last updated: Sep 06, 2026 Take-Two has revealed a significant expansion for Sid Meier's Civilization VII: Earthrise that adds a focus on spacefaring ambitions and active climate management to the global strategy experience. The add-on lets civilizations evolve from "ancient stargazers" into builders of interplanetary missions. In the eras of antiquity and exploration, players can study celestial bodies to earn strategic bonuses. As civilizations enter the modern and atomic eras, they will be able to found space agencies and send expeditions to the moons and planets of the Solar System. Successful missions will uncover new resources and planetary features that in turn drive development back on Earth. Beyond space programs, the expansion brings new mechanics for directly shaping the environment. Players will gain access to new units and technologies that can alter terrain and modify empire tile bonuses. There are also tools designed to address intensified natural disasters and global warming - including options aimed at reversing climate change. Specializing in biomes such as tundra, desert, and tropics will provide distinct strategic benefits. "Earthrise" will also add new civilizations and leaders; Take-Two says further details about those additions will be revealed in the months ahead.

'NBA 2K27' is not for the nostalgic. September 4, 2026 1:40pm For sports video game studio Visual Concepts in 2004, the possibilities to innovate felt endless as the development team worked day and night on what would become an all-time fan favorite football title. Its partnership with ESPN served as a catalyst for bringing never-before-seen presentations to ESPN NFL 2K5. Weekly virtual SportsCenter episodes in franchise mode hosted by Chris Berman? Heck yeah. Pre-draft shows with Mel Kiper? Let's go. With Visual Concepts needing to differentiate itself from bigger rival Electronic Arts two decades ago, and online play not yet the all-encompassing focus of video games, company leaders pushed staff to be adventurous with how they blended ESPN into the title. "They encouraged people to think of what they thought would be cool, and then we'd figure out a way to get there," Brandon Justice, who worked on integrating ESPN into NFL 2K5, told Sportico. Many of the core staffers from NFL 2K5 are still at Visual Concepts, now working as the brains behind the NBA 2K franchise. But more than 20 years since one of the studio's finest moments, the reception to its annual releases, including this week's NBA 2K27, is no longer so glowing. Nowadays, sports video game studios feel the heat of industry-wide staff cuts and corporate pressure to push microtransactions, putting the people in the trenches in a tough spot. Some of the coolest presentation elements of NFL 2K5, such as the Berman-led SportsCenter, long ago disappeared. "If you ask the people who [have to implement microtransactions] on the projects, they feel they're caught in the clutches of a method of sales," Rick Brown, an industry veteran who worked for Visual Concepts when it delivered some of its best-received sports games in the mid-2000s, said in a video interview. "There's just a lot of top-down influence in these companies... The [studio developers] do have good hearts. They're gamers who love solving problems in their spare time." Active Visual Concepts workers who have contributed to 2K games for at least 20 years include studio president Greg Thomas, longtime art director Matthew Crysdale and producer Abe Navarro. There has been some attrition recently - Jeff Thomas, brother of Greg, quietly retired from a leadership role around the COVID-19 pandemic, a company official confirmed, and earlier this year, EA hired legendary engineer Shawn Lee away from the studio. The 2K27 team made incremental game play and feature adjustments, even if some changes like adding back the popular 3-on-3 online Triple Threat merely solve problems developers created in prior 2K editions. Take-Two is also introducing a full WNBA franchise mode it says will be on par with its NBA franchise mode - a milestone that builds upon increased attention to the W in the last edition of the annual release. Still, a design that funnels users toward in-game purchases on top of the $70 they pay for access to the product will make it difficult for 2K27 to escape a cycle of subpar user reviews. 2K26's 4.5/10 user Metacritic score continued the franchise's streak of not receiving better than a 5/10 rating since 2016, though it still fared better than EA-published Madden NFL 26's 4/10 and EA Sports FC 26's 2.9/10. Take-Two did not respond to a request for comment. What used to be. Justice didn't know what to expect when Berman booked a time to come to the studio and record lines for the virtual SportsCenter. Video games were already a mainstream business sector, but not yet the generation-crossing phenomenon they are now. Would Berman, then 49 years old, care about the project, or would the superstar personality treat it as an annoying burden thrust on him by his employer's media arrangement? Berman made it immediately apparent he did care, and his enthusiasm delighted Visual Concepts employees in the office, who appreciated the outsider's levity amid their development grind. The team gave Berman some prewritten lines but encouraged him to improvise if he felt inspired. He stuck around riffing longer than those present anticipated. The host even left a treat for Justice, a lifelong Bengals fan, whose squad was suffering through a 13-year playoff drought and that included seven seasons of at least 12 losses. "If the Bengals played themselves," Berman ad-libbed in an outtake, "nobody would win." "All the little moments [Berman] brought, you can only kind of get from somebody who's been doing that [for real], and it allowed us to get the types of lines we wanted but also get something that was more authentic," Justice said. Many classic Berman lines familiar to sports fans did make the cut. Think: "He could. Go. All. The. Way. Touchdown!" Visual Concepts employees didn't realize NFL 2K5 would mark the end of an era. Take-Two bought Visual Concepts from Sega in 2005. Both ESPN and the NFL ditched Visual Concepts for EA that year. The rise of online play changed the industry's incentives, making immersion in offline modes less of a draw, and EA didn't see the utility of ESPN's studio shows. Meanwhile, Visual Concepts never replicated NFL 2K5's presentation details, forgoing similar partnerships with other sports rights holders as it turned its full attention to basketball. But NFL 2K5's presentation legacy lives on. A few enterprising souls have made it a tradition modify modern NBA 2K game software to include real broadcaster overlays, such as ESPN score bugs. Clips of the mods reliably go viral on social media and draw nostalgic responses. "If 2K made their game like this," one YouTube commenter wrote on one of these videos this year, "I would never stop playing." Different priorities. The financial success of sports video games now relies more on how much publishers can get users to spend after they've already shelled out for the basic game. As Take-Two tries to generate explosive year-over-year microtransaction revenue growth to compensate for initial game sales staying relatively flat, it persistently nudges users toward in-game payments. Microtransactions now make up well over half of Take-Two's earnings. The publisher's "recurrent consumer spending," Take-Two's financial filing category comprising in-game purchases, has gone from 45% of its annual net revenue in fiscal year 2020 to 78% in fiscal year 2026. In that time, annual recurrent consumer spending is up from $1.4 billion to $5.2 billion, but full-game revenue actually fell from $1.7 billion to $1.5 billion. The priorities show. When users open NBA 2K27 upon purchasing the game for $70 (or more for special editions), one of the first things they see in the main menu is an ad for the latest MyTeam mode card promo - encouraging people to spend real money on packs with long odds of getting a highly rated playable character. These pop-ups sometimes include direct calls to purchase in-game currency with no utility outside of 2K. Microtransactions also remain prominent in 2K's MyCareer, the mode where users can create an NBA prospect and play through their pro careers offline or take them into myriad online competitions. In 2K27, it costs about $50 to buy the needed attribute upgrades just to get a MyCareer player to an 84 overall rating (the equivalent ability given to players like Josh Giddey and Mikal Bridges) without playing a game. While the exact amount of money needed to unlock all of the "cap breakers" required to go from an 84 to 99 is unclear - the highest possible rating - it likely costs at least another $50-100. The game also encourages people to use real money to buy virtual outfits and accessories for created players. Muffled voice. Earlier this summer, consumers briefly hoped they could use their voices to force sports video game reform. After EA added new microtransactions to EA Sports College Football 27 forcing people pay real money to improve their virtual college football programs at an efficient pace, gamers scored a rare response to their complaints. "I feel lied to," said YouTuber Bordeaux, who has almost 600,000 subscribers and claimed EA hadn't informed him of the new microtransactions ahead of time. "I feel betrayed." EA sought to stem the backlash after many of the social media influencers it had partnered with to promote the game, including Bordeaux, vowed to stop working with the company. As an olive branch, EA dialed back some - but not all - of the microtransactions in College Football 27's Dynasty and Road to Glory modes. That walk-back was rare and unlikely to stick. For the most part, a decade of persistent negative gamer feedback hasn't slowed the steady expansion of in-game purchases. Unlike the early 2000s, most sports have only one associated video game simulation made for consoles each year, and the lack of competition means companies can get away with adding friction to the user experience, because they don't need to worry about alternative options. During 2K27's early access period, in which people could pay extra money to play the game a few days before everyone else, the game's devoted Reddit channel filled with the now-typical complaints that developers had prioritized microtransactions over presentation depth and game play improvements. So far, Take-Two hasn't issued a response. Even if some of the social media gripes about 2K27 reflect broader cynicism of today's world than 2004 - Reddit didn't even exist then - the financial data shows where gaming companies are now inspired to focus their energy. Immersion from broadcast packages featuring real TV networks does not appear high on the agenda. The old days of sports video games are, as Berman would say, "Back, back, back, back... Gone!"

Take-Two (TTWO) stock drops 7%: should investors Buy the dip ahead of GTA VI release? Key takeaways. Table of Contents * Take-Two Interactive shares plummeted 6.7% to $219.70, ranking among the S&P 500's five weakest performers Monday * Market analysts attribute the decline to postponement speculation rather than leaked GTA VI footage * Netflix recorded 31.1 million views for the GTA VI gameplay reveal, achieving top ranking in 87 out of 93 monitored markets * Bank of America experts believe additional delays are improbable following the comprehensive gameplay trailer release * Analysts maintain a Strong Buy consensus on TTWO shares with a mean price projection of $297.29 Shares of Take-Two Interactive experienced a significant downturn Monday, declining 6.7% to reach $219.70 amid growing speculation that the highly anticipated Grand Theft Auto VI might encounter another postponement. Numerous social media commentators attributed the selloff to unauthorized GTA VI gameplay footage that surfaced online. However, market analysts have challenged this interpretation. Nick McKay, who serves as senior research analyst at Freedom Capital Markets, indicated the price movement stemmed from postponement concerns rather than the leaked content. In a Monday research note, he characterized these delay rumors as "low-quality." McKay further referenced statements from Rockstar Games executive Rob Nelson, who reaffirmed the game remains on schedule during an Aug. 28 interview with Famitsu. Analysts from Jefferies supported this assessment, concluding the unauthorized leaks had negligible influence on share performance. Omar Dessouky, analyst at Bank of America, suggested that another delay appears highly unlikely. "With a full gameplay trailer now out, we see the risk of a further delay as very low, since the reveal signals the game is playable," his analysis stated. Prior to Monday's selloff, TTWO shares had settled at $235.39 Friday following the gameplay trailer's debut on Netflix and YouTube on Aug. 27. That represented a 1% gain from Thursday's closing price. GTA VI achieves unprecedented Netflix success. The gameplay reveal generated remarkable engagement on Netflix. The approximately 27-minute gameplay showcase accumulated 31.1 million views and secured the platform's top-viewed content position for the week. The video captured the No. 1 spot in 87 of Netflix's 93 monitored territories. Netflix maintained exclusivity for the content during a six-hour window before it became available on YouTube and additional platforms. The GTA VI preview even surpassed viewership for Netflix's latest Robert De Niro feature, The Whisper Man, and the fifth season premiere of Outer Banks. This marked an unprecedented promotional partnership between Netflix and a forthcoming video game title. Consumer enthusiasm has been building for years. The initial GTA VI announcement trailer from 2023 has accumulated approximately 293 million YouTube views to date. Unauthorized footage fails to diminish audience interest. Take-Two has confronted ongoing challenges with unauthorized content releases. Over a dozen GTA VI clips emerged online prior to the official gameplay unveiling. The publisher subsequently issued subpoenas to messaging service Discord seeking to identify those responsible for the breaches. In an Aug. 26 statement posted on X, Rockstar Games characterized the unauthorized leaks as "heartbreaking," while also expressing regret regarding the game's previous delay. GTA VI's release timeline shifted from its initial fall 2025 target to May 2026, with the current launch date set for November 19. Notwithstanding the unauthorized content distribution, consumer demand for official footage remained exceptionally strong, with the Netflix premiere providing compelling validation of sustained interest. Analysts currently assign TTWO a Strong Buy rating, with 18 Buy recommendations issued over the previous three months and a consensus price objective of $297.29, suggesting approximately 37% appreciation potential from present trading levels. Limited Time Offer Get 3 free stock ebooks. Discover top-performing stocks in AI, Crypto, and Technology with expert analysis. * Top 10 AI Stocks - Leading AI companies * Top 10 Crypto Stocks - Blockchain leaders * Top 10 Tech Stocks - Tech giants