14 DAY TRIAL // Gearbox Software President Randy Pitchford decided to defend the developer's decision to make "yet another MOBA," talking about what Gearbox is actually trying to create with the upcoming Battleborn.
Pitchford took to Twitter to respond to the many people saying that we don't need another multiplayer battle arena game, pointing out that Battleborn is first and foremost a first-person shooter.
"Calling Battleborn a MOBA would be like calling Borderlands a Diablo clone," Pitchford tweeted, when asked whether Battleborn is a first-person shooter or a MOBA game.
The developer tried to explain Gearbox's decision to create a completely new IP, instead of just catering to the fans and working on making the next installment in the Borderlands series. He even pointed out that the team did the same thing when creating the first Borderlands, when told that it might be too risky to develop an entirely new IP instead of banking on the already existing one's popularity.
"Everyone said the same thing about Borderlands. If we didn't bet on new, Borderlands itself never would've existed," Pitchford stated.
He also acknowledged the popularity of the Borderlands series, and the fact that he understood why everyone was demanding a sequel.
"Lots of people LOVE Borderlands. It's perfectly fair and awesome for people to want more of something they love," he said, adding that when you "bet on the future, you've got to bet on new."
"If we didn't believe this, there wouldn't even be a Borderlands. Every new thing we have done has been more successful than the last. So we should race at new things, right?" he put forward, presumably crossing his fingers and hoping that nobody will remember Aliens: Colonial Marines and Duke Nukem Forever, two games that everyone hated, which Gearbox made after the release of the first title in the Borderlands series.
While neither Aliens nor Duke Nukem were new properties, and both had their already established tropes, lore and expectations tied to them, it definitely seems that where Gearbox is at the top of its game is where it's allowed to do its own thing.
The latest entry in the "its own thing" category is the upcoming Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, which is scheduled to come out on October 14 in North America and October 17 in the rest of the world, for the Windows PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 platforms.
Battleborn is the studio's next big project, a brand new first-person shooter with MOBA elements, designed to take full advantage of the new generation of consoles.