PlayStation Vita Version of BioShock Still in "Paper Design Stage"
by Alex Co, posted on 19 October 2011 / 1,537 Views
Irrational Games' Ken Levine went up on stage during Sony's E3 press conference to the delight of many - and the famed game designer did not disappoint. There he announced that an all-new portable version of BioShock will be making its way to Sony's next-gen handheld.
If you're curious where the studio is with that game, you're not the only one. Speaking to Joystiq, Ken Levine admitted, "We're still sort of in the paper design stage." Meaning to say that the game is still in the planning stages and not deep into development as some people might have hoped.
Levine also stresses that it will be a brand-new installment in the BioShock franchise that will grace the PlayStation Vita.
If you think this is sad news, it gets a bit worse. The Irrational Games head honcho also admitted that they're open to the idea of having an external studio handle the project. Seeing as the studio only has 110 employees and they're working hard on BioShock Infinite. In fact, Levine has spoken to some "extraordinary people" regarding the potential to outsource the PS Vita version of BioShock - though he's not ready to commit to any particular studio just yet.
To keep quality level ... I wish I could say it was easy ... it just tend to be more time consuming (working with external partners, It's just hard to find the right partners or the right people to hire.
His main worry is for the outsourced project to maintan the same quality the studio's know for.
We have a Metacritic average of something like 88 or 89 percent (87.7). 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.
It looks like we're still quite far off to enjoy Levine's franchise in portable form, no? In any case, would you be comfortable if another studio made the game instead of Irrational Games or should they finish BioShock Infinite first before tackling the Vita project themselves?
