Though Irrational Games co-founder Ken Levine took to the stage during Sony’s E3 press event and announced a brand-new installment in the BioShock franchise for the PlayStation Vita, that doesn’t mean the game is deep in development.
"We're still sort of in the paper design stage," Levine told Joystiq. He was also quick to note that the game is not just a portable version of BioShock, BioShock 2, or BioShock Infinite.
"That's not the current goal for what we're doing," Levine said. "I think for us, the idea we have is a really good expression on a platform like that [Vita]. It's a different goal. And it has to sort of have its own voice in the franchise. If it just feels like a quieter voice in the franchise, I don't think that works. For us. I'd rather do something that's an experiment and that's a little different. And is unique for the franchise.”
Currently, the team is hard at work on Infinite, so Levine did admit that there’s a slight possibility of an outside studio handling the game.
"There are never enough resources to do anything, you know?" Levine offered. "We're always stretched. Potentially, potentially.”
"We have a Metacritic average of something like 88 or 89 percent [87.7 percent]. And the way you do that is you're very careful with your bets ... we made that bet and now we're very carefully proceeding to make sure that it's a game that stands tall within the franchise,” he added. "To keep quality level ... I wish I could say it was easy ... it just tend to be more time consuming. It's just hard to find the right partners or the right people to hire."
Looks like you won’t be playing BioShock on-the-go anytime soon.
