Strauss Zelnick has made a surprising admission regarding BioShock.
The Take-Two CEO was asked if he was surprised that they haven’t released a new game since 2013’s BioShock Infinite. Strauss said this:
“Think about what ‘surprise’ implies… That’s like, one day, everything’s awesome, and the next day, I’m like, ‘Holy shit’. And I don’t run the business that way. But I think if you’re saying ‘disappointed’, yes. Deeply disappointed.
We don’t publicly know what went down in the past 13 years, but Take-Two did agree to let former BioShock showrunner Ken Levine leave the IP and take time to make a new one, now known as Judas.
There is a new BioShock in production by a new studio Cloud Chamber, and Strauss says he feels a lot better about the current project. Again, in Strauss’ words:
I think finding the right creative purchase was hard, as it turns out… I think we, in retrospect, wasted a lot of time and money chasing down some creative alleys that turned out to be dead ends.
It sure sounds like the new BioShock has Take-Two’s commitment. We can only hope that Gearbox and Take-Two can carry it to the finish line.