Skip to main content

2K Games: No annual sequels for BioShock, Borderlands, or Grand Theft Auto

2k games
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Ubisoft, Activision, and many others: Go ahead and ask those publishers where the big money is. Franchising! Establish your intellectual property and keep it out there. Call of Duty hasn’t missed a year since 2005, a non-stop stream of guns and bullets with ever-increasing sales and scale. Assassin’s Creed has donned its cowl on a perennial basis since 2007 (though 2008 was a bit of a cheat with the Nintendo DS release Assassin’s Creed: Altair’s Chronicles.) The thinking is that if you’re going to spend the massive sums necessary to make HD games, you’ve got to keep product out there earning.

At least one publisher refuses this strategy. Don’t expect 2K Games to push its development partners to get Borderlands 3, BioShock 4, or Grand Theft Auto VI on shelves within a year of their predecessors.

Recommended Videos

“It’s our view that if you want intellectual properties to be permanent, then you run the risk in circumstance of having consumers fall out of love with that franchise,” explains 2K parent company Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick. He points to Call of Duty: Black Ops II’s flat sales compared to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 as an example. “[Activision] obviously views the world differently. Ours do better each time. Our view is it’s hard to make permanent intellectual properties if you annualize it, with the exception of sports titles. So far that’s proven to be the case. IP that is annualized eventually seems to hit the wall and we don’t want our IP to hit the wall.”

This isn’t to say that Take-Two isn’t reliant on brands. The company relies heavily on titles made by Rockstar Games to turn a profit, and its suffered losses in recent years when those Rockstar games haven’t connected with consumers. Grand Theft Auto IV and Red Dead Redemption helped the company turn in record earnings in 2008 and 2010, but this year the lower than expected sales of Max Payne 3 (in addition to the delay of titles like BioShock Infinite) hit the company hard.

Taking the time and capital necessary to produce a great game like Borderlands 2 is paying off for the company, though. It let Gearbox Software take its time with development and in the meantime maximized the possible audience for the original Borderlands in between.

Activision should look to its own history of saturating the market with franchises. Over-releasing titles in the Tony Hawk and Guitar Hero series killed those properties and the publisher is running the risk of doing the same for Call of Duty

Anthony John Agnello
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Anthony John Agnello is a writer living in New York. He works as the Community Manager of Joystiq.com and his writing has…
Grand Theft Auto 6 just got the smallest teaser, but we’ll take what we can get
Woman in the GTA 6 trailer at a rooftop pool party. She's in a white bikini.

The line between teaser and Easter egg can be extremely slim, and nowhere has that been apparent on Tuesday than this necklace in the upcoming Grand Theft Auto 6.

A user on the GTA 6 subreddit (via Gamespot) noticed that a necklace that appeared in the game's first trailer is also now available to buy in the recently-released Bottom Dollar Bounties update for Grand Theft Auto Online, which added bail enforcement on June 25. It's called the "Silver Layered Necklace," and, according to one Redditor on the post, it's just one of many assets that seem to have come over to the franchise's online component.

Read more
Grand Theft Auto 5 and 11 more games are leaving PS Plus in June
Trevor, Michael, and Franklin are all holding guns in GTA 5 promotional art.

PlayStation Plus users will be losing out on 12 games in June, and one of them is a must-play if you're a fan of open-world action adventures from 2013.

Grand Theft Auto 5 is widely considered to be one of the most iconic games all time, and it's definitely the best Grand Theft Auto game. It's also easy to play on nearly any platform (minus Nintendo Switch, of course). It even received a next-gen upgrade for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S in 2022. That said, if you have a PlayStation Plus subscription and wanted to play it at some point -- or just wanted to get a session or two in before Grand Theft Auto 6 -- you'll have until June 12 to do so.

Read more
Grand Theft Auto 6 will launch in fall 2025
Woman in the GTA 6 trailer at a rooftop pool party. She's in a white bikini.

Strauss Zelnick, CEO of Rockstar Games' parent company Take-Two Interactive, just confirmed a more specific release window for the highly anticipated Grand Theft Auto VI.

This interview came alongside Take-Two Interactive's latest earnings call. "Our outlook reflects a narrowing of Rockstar Games' previously established window of calendar 2025 to fall of calendar 2025 for Grand Theft Auto VI. We are highly confident that Rockstar Games will deliver an unparalleled entertainment experience, and our expectations for the commercial impact of the title continue to increase," Zelnick explained in a press release discussing the outlook for fiscal year 2025.

Read more