14 DAY TRIAL // Randy Pitchford, the president of developer Gearbox, has admitted that putting out Borderlands, the new science fiction shooter it has been developing in quite some time, will be a risky affair, mainly because of the heightened competition on the videogame market generated by the world wide economic crisis and the impending releases of Modern Warfare 2 and Halo 3: ODST, some of the most hyped titles of 2009.
Pitchford talked to Eurogamer about his feelings and mentioned that “When people take risks and it's not rewarded, in the case of Mirror's Edge, it makes it harder for others to be comfortable taking risks. Yeah, I'm terrified. And an original brand, too, so it's even more risky.” But he believes that there's enough in Borderlands to make players interested, saying that “if it's good, it'll get noticed.”
Borderlands has seen some changes in the last few months. The initial graphics look, which aimed for realism, was replaced by a more artful image, somewhat akin to cell shading and the gameplay itself was oriented more toward offering a “fun experience.”
Borderlands is a shooter priding itself on offering the player about half a million of unique weapons that can be used to take out enemies on a far away world as the gamer looks for a cache of alien technology.
Borderlands is set to arrive on the PC, the Xbox 360 from Microsoft and the PlayStation 3 from Sony in October, which is awfully close to the November release date of Modern Warfare 2.
Still, the audience of the two titles might prove to be different enough to guarantee both of them big sales. Modern Warfare 2 will be the best seller of the two, mainly because of the wider marketing campaign and because of the brand recognition offered by Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.