After Take-Two’s financial report on Feb 3rd, the company’s president Karl Slatoff stated that the newly announced next ‘Borderlands’ title will developed “specifically for next-gen consoles.”
This next installment has not been confirmed to be ‘Borderlands 3,’ but the talk around this next ‘Borderlands’ certainly suggest it will be. In a Tweet calling for recruitments for development of the new game, Gearbox President Randy Pitchford calls it “the big one,” which leads most fans to believe that this game is likely the anticipated third installment of the franchise rather than another spin-off or DLC. There is also currently no projected release date for the game as well.
While this does not necessarily mean that “the big one” won’t be available for old-gen consoles, Slatoff’s comment suggests that it will possbily be new-gen exclusive, so PS3 and Xbox 360 owners beware.
Some companies are still publishing and planning to publish their games on both new and old-gen consoles to appeal to a wider audience, but after the strong sales of both the PS4 and Xbox One combined with a profitable year for Take-Two, the company may be more comfortable taking the risk to be next-gen exclusive. While it could limit their potential market, it may be worth it for the publisher to be able to focus on the capabilities of the new-gen consoles without conforming to the old-gen’s limitations, including improved graphics, innovative gameplay, and other new features.
For now, fans of the game series can look forward to ‘Borderlands: The Handsome Collection’ coming out on March 24th 2015 in North America and March 27th internationally. The bundle comes with both ‘Borderlands 2’ and ‘Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel’ with updated graphics, additional content, and the ability to have up to four players share one screen during multiplayer, all on the new-gen consoles.
