New entries in the BioShock series used to arrive at a fairly consistent rate ever since the first game was released in 2007, but ever since work on BioShock Infinite and its expansions wrapped up, the franchise appears to be in limbo. That’s not for a lack of trying, as back in 2019, 2K Games established Cloud Chamber to lead the charge on new BioShock games. Since then, nothing has been seen of the project, while layoffs at Cloud Chamber saw the departure of studio head Kelley Gilmore and former Diablo boss Rod Fergusson taking over.
In an interview with Game File, Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick spoke about being “deeply disappointed” about how Take-Two Interactive hadn’t made a new BioShock game in over a decade, but he expressed hope for the future of the franchise.
“I think finding the right creative purchase was hard, as it turns out,” Zelnick added when quizzed about current attempts to revive BioShock. “I think we, in retrospect, wasted a lot of time and money chasing down some creative alleys that turned out to be dead ends.”
Zelnick explained that this was also the “nature of entertainment,” and that he was more optimistic now that plans are starting to come together, similar to how he oversaw the production of films when he was working for movie studios.
“What we do is a big team activity in the same way that making a movie is a team activity,” Zelnick explained. “And with big team activities, you can’t necessarily tell how it’s going to be until it all comes together, or begins to come together, and that can take a while and can be very costly. I also did a couple of movies [in which] when you put it all together, having spent all this money in real time, it wasn’t a movie. It was unreleasable.”
Zelnick had previously addressed the lengthy development cycle of the next BioShock, promising that it will eventually be released. Meanwhile, a BioShock movie is also in development at Netflix and a remake of the first game was reportedly canceled.
While BioShock creator Ken Levine isn’t involved in the new BioShock game, his new game, Judas, is shaping up to be a spiritual successor that also offers a few fresh ideas of its own.
