Bioshock 4 won’t be cancelled despite failed review, says Take-Two boss

Six years have passed since the yet-untitled BioShock sequel was announced, so the news that the in-progress game had failed an internal review by executives was cause for alarm. Development leads shuffled around —Game director Kelley Gilmore and creative director Hogarth de la Plante were bumped from their roles as a result— and the Cloud Chamber team was reportedly told that the studio needed to be “more agile and efficient”. With recent stories of publishers killing projects for much less, it raised concern that Cloud Chamber was about to be hit with layoffs, or even that the long-awaited Bioshock 4 would be cancelled. However, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick has promised that that’s not the case.

“It’s going to come out,” Zelnick said in an interview with IGN, “That I can say hand on heart, without question.” According to Zelnick, the game’s development has seen some bumps in the road. “We have had some ups and downs along the way. That is accurate. And we have had changes in studio leadership. That said, we have very big shoes to fill on BioShock because of the legacy of Ken Levine, the legacy of what has gone before, which has been so successful. And we need to make sure that this experience is true to the BioShock DNA on the one hand, and a massive step forward on the other hand. That’s always challenging. We think we’re up to the challenge, but it has not been seamless.”

Ken Levine, the director of BioShock 1, 2, and Infinite, left the franchise after 2014 and founded a new development team called Ghost Story Games. He and his team are currently working on a first-person shooter game that is very BioShock-like called Judas.

It’s a positive sign that Zelnick seems sure that BioShock 4 will make it to store shelves, but as the games industry has well learned, sometimes it’s not up to the development leads. The game is in an intangible state right now, and who knows what another failed review might do to the project. Zelnick seems aware that games development has gotten harder over the last decade, as he stated, “I think it’s a reflection of the fact that as entertainment businesses mature, consumers seek quality and everyone realises that the consumer is highly demanding and properly so,” he said. “The strategy of this company has always been to make the best entertainment, not necessarily the most entertainment. Of course, sometimes we’ve fallen short, but frankly, a precious few times. And I think some of our competitors have realised, maybe a little late in the day, that consumers are not okay with okay. Good is the new bad, great is the new great. And our goal here is to make everything exceptional.”

As of now, there is no news on a potential release date for BioShock 4 or what platforms it might appear on.