All Articles: BioShock 4

Cloud Chamber is 2K’s newest internal studio and their first project is BioShock 4

Posted on December 9, 2019 by John Scalzo

The best news to arrive in our inbox this morning is that 2K Games has finally confirmed that BioShock 4 is officially in development. However, the bad news is that the project is just getting off the ground and that it’ll likely be in development “for the next several years.”

While we didn’t learn anything substantial about the next entry in the BioShock franchise today, 2K did share that the game is currently in the works at a brand new internal studio known as Cloud Chamber. The Cloud Chamber team will be split across two locations, San Francisco and Montreal, and Kelley Gilmore (formerly of Firaxis) will head up the joint effort from her home base in California.

“We founded Cloud Chamber to create yet-to-be-discovered worlds – and their stories within – that push the boundaries of what is possible in the video game medium,” said Gilmore. “Our team believes in the beauty and strength of diversity, in both the makeup of the studio and the nature of its thinking. We are a deeply experienced group of game makers, including many responsible for BioShock’s principal creation, advancement, and longstanding notoriety, and honored to be part of the 2K family as stewards of this iconic franchise.”

“As we continue growing our product portfolio, we remain inspired by opportunities to invest further in our valuable IP, great people and their collective, long-term potential,” added 2K’s President, David Ismailer. “BioShock is one of the most beloved, critically praised and highest-rated franchises of the last console generation*. We can’t wait to see where its powerful narrative and iconic, first-person shooter gameplay head in the future with our new studio team at Cloud Chamber leading the charge.”

With a multi-year development schedule ahead of it, BioShock 4 is most likely in development for the PC and one or both of the next-generation console platforms.

Posted in News, PC, PS5, Xbox Series X | Tagged

Rumor: BioShock 4 is secretly in development at a secret 2K Games studio

Posted on April 14, 2018 by John Scalzo

After Ken Levine closed the door on Irrational Games in 2014, he confirmed that 2K Games had also taken over ownership of the BioShock franchise. At the time, fans assumed that a BioShock 4 announcement was imminent, but here we are in 2018, and the publisher has yet to announce a return to Rapture (or its skybound cousin Columbia)

While this lack of communication through official channels is standard operating procedure for 2K Games, a new report on Kotaku has shed a little light on what fans can expect from the fourth entry in the BioShock franchise.

While investigating the aftermath of Mafia III‘s launch on Hangar 13, Kotaku’s Jason Schreier stumbled upon the existence of a small 2K team operating right next door… a small team that’s secretly working on BioShock 4 (currently codenamed “Parkside”):

In the midst of all this confusion, some employees of Hangar 13 couldn’t help but look with envy at their neighbors. Next door, a small group of people were working on a project code-named Parkside, quietly recruiting from across the video game industry for a game so secret, they wouldn’t even tell their colleagues at Hangar 13 about it. Word got out, though, that it was in fact a new game in one of the most interesting shooter franchises of the past decade: BioShock.

According to Schreier’s sources, 2K Games is proceeding very carefully with the creation of BioShock 4, as they try to figure out the “core thing” of the franchise:

“The issue is that Parkside’s not ready for lots of people,” said one person involved. “They’re trying to be really smart about figuring out what the core thing is. They’re careful about not falling into the same problem every studio has, where they have too many people and nothing for them to do.”

Schreier’s inside look at the development of Mafia III and the trouble Hangar 13 ran into when developing their followup project is well worth your time, but it looks like we’ll have to wait for another day to learn more about BioShock 4.

Strauss Zelnick, the CEO of 2K Games parent company Take-Two Interactive, told investors that the company plans to publish a “highly-anticipated new title from one of 2K’s biggest franchises” sometime in the next 12 months. It’s certainly possible that he was talking about BioShock 4, but we won’t know for sure until the notoriously tight-lipped publisher makes it official.

That said, the 2018 E3 Expo is right around the corner…

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