It's telling that when we ranked the BioShock games earlier this year, we rated them not "best to worst" but "best to least-best." The simple fact is that even the least of them, BioShock 2 according to our readers (an assessment I wholeheartedly agree with), was still a damn good game. That's why it came as such a surprise in early 2014 when top Shocker Ken Levine decided to pull the plug on Irrational Games. Why would he, or anyone, kill the goose that lays the golden games?
He didn't, of course. Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick discussed the future of the franchise a few months after Irrational was closed down, saying, "We haven't given any color on how you should think about [BioShock's future] yet except we do believe it's beloved. We think it's important [and] certainly something that we're focused on."
It's been well over a year since then, but Zelnick reiterated that stance over the weekend at the MKM Partners Investor Day Conference, where, as reported by Gamespot, he committed to the long-term future of the series. "The franchise is in the hands of 2K," he said. "They'll make announcements in due time about any upcoming releases. But BioShock is unquestionably a permanent franchise in our company and one that we do believe in."
When last we heard, the BioShock franchise had been handed to 2K Marin for shaping in the post-Ken Levine era. Its long-term plans for the series remain a mystery.
