14 DAY TRIAL // The development team at Gearbox says that despite its big focus on the Borderlands franchise, which seems to be dominating its future, it also has a number of smaller teams that are currently working on entirely new intellectual properties that will be revealed in the near future.
Randy Pitchford, the leader of the company, tells Eurogamer that, “We are inventive. We know if we take the posture that we should only make sequels because they're safe and it's a sure thing, if we took that posture Borderlands wouldn't even exist. When my studio created Brothers In Arms it was a huge hit.”
He explains that maybe it would have been safe for Gearbox to stick with the World War II franchise, but they decided that it would be a better idea to explore new concepts.
Borderlands was a result of the search for new intellectual properties and it has since then become a huge hit for the company, with two full titles and numerous add-ons launched for them.
Pitchford adds, “Gratefully, we can't help ourselves. We like to invent, so we did create new things. Although we haven't announced anything, I haven't been quiet that we're building new IP at Gearbox. We'll announce something in the future about that.”
At the moment, Gearbox is working with 2K Australia on the development of Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, which is set to take players to the moon of Pandora with new weapons, a new cast of characters and a story built around the way Handsome Jack became a villain.
The game is set to be launched on the Xbox 360 from Microsoft, the PlayStation 3 from Sony and the PC before the end of the year.
The studio is also working on the remakes of the two original Homeworld titles, which should also be launched in 2014 and might pave the way for a full-blown series for the space-based strategy series.
In conjunction with Telltale Games, Gearbox is also developing an episodic experience called Tales from the Borderlands, which will expand the lore of the universe in interesting ways.
There have been no hints about the kind of new intellectual properties that the company is currently working on, but the fact that the new Borderlands title is being created for current-gen consoles might mean that the new games are made for the Xbox One from Microsoft and the PlayStation 4 from Sony.