Strauss Zelnick has explained what happened to the new BioShock and what’s happened to Borderlands 4’s Switch 2 port.
While all the attention is on GTA 6 at the moment, with its launch set for this November, that’s not the only game publisher Take-Two Interactive is busy with right now.
Perhaps its next biggest project (of those it’s confirmed) is the new BioShock, which was announced all the way back in 2019, as new studio Cloud Chamber’s first game, but has never been shown in public.
As such, Zelnick has confessed to being ‘disappointed’ with how long it’s taken to get a new BioShock out the door, although it’s implied progress on the project has speeded up recently.
Following rumours and reports of BioShock 4 being in development hell and having required a significant overhaul, Take-Two confirmed last year that former Gears Of War and Diablo boss Rod Fergusson has been brought in to spearhead development and that Cloud Chamber has been hit with lay-offs.
In a lengthy interview with Game File, Zelnick stressed that he’s not surprised by BioShock 4’s lengthy development time. Modern game development, especially for AAA projects, has ballooned over the years, although Zelnick acknowledged that Take-Two and Cloud Chamber ‘wasted a lot of time and money chasing down some creative alleys that turned out to be dead ends.’
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Zelnick also said he’s ‘feeling a lot better’ about the game now, suggesting that BioShock 4 is currently in a good place and hasn’t been cancelled – although he refrained from going into any detail.
Elsewhere in the interview, Zelnick discussed the performance of last year’s Civilization 7, which was criticised for how overly streamlined it was, its lack of content, and how it introduced fixed ages that force a soft reset once you reach the end of each one.
Basically, it was a disappointing follow-up; one that Zelnick has taken responsibility for, albeit without specifying what he’s apologising for or what he thought went wrong with it.
‘Every time there’s a new Civilization, the team at [developer] Firaxis thinks about: ‘How do we push the envelope far enough that it makes sense to buy this new game? And how do we preserve what people love enough so that they’re not disaffected?’ And we got it wrong with Civilzation 7, but it wasn’t for want of trying. And again, I take responsibility for it,’ said Zelnick.
‘So we’ve made a bunch of fixes. We’ll continue to make fixes. The game is a really good game. And it’s certainly a profitable enterprise for us. But this is one where I think what we tried to do was a bridge too far, from the consumer’s perspective.’
He also briefly touched on the Borderlands 4 port for Nintendo Switch 2, which was indefinitely delayed last year. Considering the issues that plagued the PC version, it was believed that the Switch 2 version was just as bad, if not worse.
However, Zelnick has insisted that Borderlands 4’s Switch 2 delay is not due to technical issues with that version and is actually so the development team can prioritise fixing the PC version.
‘We’ve been addressing those challenges, and we want to make sure that we’ve fully addressed Borderlands 4 from a consumer’s point of view before we bring it to more platforms,’ said Zelnick, adding that the Switch 2 port is ‘doable,’ so it should see the light of day and not be quietly abandoned.
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