14 DAY TRIAL // Ken Levine, the designer of the upcoming BioShock Infinite title, isn’t worried about the game’s October launch date, saying that the game will stand out among the rest of the holiday season releases.
BioShock Infinite is the sequel to the impressive BioShock 1 and 2 titles, delivering a whole new story while once again featuring a variety of moral dilemmas and tough choices.
Developer Irrational Games and publisher 2K recently pinned a release date on the game, which is out in October.
This launch puts BioShock Infinite right in the busy season before the winter holiday, when all sorts of other big games are coming out.
This fact doesn’t worry designer Ken Levine, who believes the game’s unique nature will make it stand out among other big releases.
"It's hard to categorize BioShock for people in their heads,” Levine told Eurogamer. “It has its own vibe. It's a strange and different game. In the same way Portal didn't compete directly with anything. So you don't worry so much about, oh my god, we're competing directly with this, what are we going to do?”
The Irrational designer continued, saying that the game wouldn’t encounter problems like Battlefield 3 last year, when it was directly competing with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.
"We don't have the problem that, say, a Battlefield had last year - and I don't think they viewed it as a problem, they viewed it as an opportunity - of going up in a head-to-head," he continued.
Levine remarks that a holiday season release for a game is a gamble, as lots of money can be earned, even if competition is much stiffer.
"Obviously, when you go into that time period you have a positive and negative. The negative is there are a lot of games competing for the dollar or pound of the gamer. Or the euro - I want to be inclusive here. But also there are a lot of people going into stores at that point, and a lot of people buying gifts. It's a yin and yang situation."
BioShock Infinite is out on October 16, in North America, and October 19, in Europe, for the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360. During that time frame other big games like Assassin’s Creed III, Medal of Honor: Warfighter, and more will also appear.