14 DAY TRIAL // Ken Levine, the video game creator best known for creating the BioShock franchise, says that there’s at the moment little hope that fans of the series will ever be able to play the Vita-based video games that his studio and 2K Games talked about in the past.
A video game for the Sony handheld that would use the Rapture setting and the core BioShock mechanics was initially mentioned during the E3 trade event in 2011, but no details were offered on the story that it might tell or the way it would use the unique elements of the Vita.
In 2012, Ken Levine gave fans an update on the matter and explained that the entire project was on hold in order to give lawyers from Sony and 2K Games time to work out a series of legal details and to make sure that the team at Irrational Games would be able to focus on BioShock Infinite.
Since then, the two companies have not talked about the title and a Twitter message from the game creator explains that it will probably never be launched in any state.
It seems that the title was supposed to introduce a set of new gameplay mechanics and would have been different from the BioShock titles that are offered on the PC and on home consoles.
He states, “On the Vita game: 2k and Sony couldn't put a deal together when I last checked. They seemed way more optimistic about this back in 2011.”
Ken Levine seems genuinely upset about the fact that he cannot create a version of BioShock for the PlayStation Vita.
He adds, “Wish I could do it myself, but lawyers and all that. I still love my Vita.”
One of the problems might be that Irrational Games, the creator of the BioShock game universe, no longer exists at the moment.
2K Games and Sony have worked together in order to create the PlayStation Vita version of Borderlands 2.
Irrational Games was dismantled earlier in the year, and Ken Levine announced that he was taking a small group of developers and was setting up a new studio which would work with the publisher in order to create smaller and more innovative games that focus on narrative and on replayability.
The BioShock franchise is currently owned by Take Two, and the company has suggested that it plans to create more titles associated with it in the future.