14 DAY TRIAL // Randy Pitchford, who is the president of development studio Gearbox Software, revealed at the DICE Summit, which took place in Las Vegas, that their latest release, Borderlands, is a 3-million copies sold franchise and that they are ready to deliver more content for it as long as gamers are interested in it and as long as they have innovative ideas.
The title faced quite a tough release window when it came out in late 2009, sandwiched between Halo 3: ODST, a spinoff of one of the biggest franchises for the Xbox 360 developed by Bungie, and Modern Warfare 2, the sequel made by Infinity Ward, which went to be the biggest game of last year.
Borderlands was also advertised as a mixture between a straight first person shooter and a role playing experience and some analysts predicted that the outing of BioWare's Dragon Age: Origins might also steal its thunder.
Pitchford says that actually the mix between genres is what drew players to the game. And the company chose to repay them by offering new content via DLC. The only question that they are facing, now that the third package, Borderlands: The Secret Armory of General Knoxx, is being prepared, is “How imperfect is ‘good enough’?” followed by “So where is the sweet spot? When do we stop? That's the dilemma we all face.”
The president also showed an internal schedule of Gearbox, which reveals that the company is now working on two new projects, bearing the code names Cedar and Oak. He was not ready to talk about them or even say whether they are truly fresh games or other pieces of DLC for Borderlands. Considering that Fallout 3, another title that combined RPG and FPS elements, got five big content packs, it would not be too far fetched to think that Gearbox is having a similar schedule in mind.