14 DAY TRIAL // The Duke Nukem franchise will continue to see new installments, at least according to the owner of the intellectual property, Take-Two Interactive, despite the not so stellar debut of Duke Nukem Forever.
After more than a decade of development at 3D Realms, and then, after the bankruptcy of the original team, at Gearbox Software, among other studios, Duke Nukem Forever was finally delivered to the masses of gamers that awaited the return of the iconic character.
The debut of the game saw strong sales, at least according to Take-Two and Gearbox Software, but in terms of quality, many reviews thrashed it.
This doesn't mean the series is over, as Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick told Forbes that the publisher isn't done with the Duke Nukem IP, and we might see new things coming that star the famous character.
"We don’t really talk about it in detail but you will see future Duke IP coming from this company," Zelnick said. "Part of it is the economic opportunities that interact with entertainment are so huge. Part of it is that we are very creative folks in control. Part of it is we don’t want to ever be in the position of dumping something down just to make another buck."
The Take-Two executive continued, saying that the Duke Nukem property might be brought over to other mediums, not just video games, including comic books or actual novels, like the BioShock franchise, which saw the arrival of the Rapture book earlier this year.
"If we can take some of our intellectual property and bring it to another medium in an extraordinary high quality way, that delights consumers and represents an interesting commercial opportunity for us, we will. We have certainly considered doing that with BioShock and with other titles. So far we haven’t brought anything to market, but stay tuned."
Seeing as how Duke Nukem Forever was still embraced in terms of sales by gamers, you can bet that Take-Two is hammering away at a new deal with Gearbox Software to develop a proper, current generation game with Duke Nukem, and, as you can tell by the statements above, other avenues for Duke are also considered.