Strap on your boots and get on your high horses; Take-Two Interactive – the team that distributed the wild west open world shooter Red Dead Redemption – have hinted at a future sequel. In fact, company CEO, Strauss Zelnick, said recently that the series could become a permanent fixture.
“It’s obvious that GTA is a permanent franchise as long as we keep delivering this incredible quality; it seems quite obvious that Red Dead is a permanent franchise, again with the same caveat.”
Red Dead Redemption has gone on to sell more than 13 million copies since its release in May 2010, so it’s not surprising that a sequel is a real possibility. Take-Two have been releasing successful franchises every year since 2007, and are no doubt interested in continuing the trend.
Zenick says he knows a permanent franchise when he sees one, and is whetting the appetites of gamers further by hinting at more titles; dropping such names as Borderlands and NBA into conversations and confirming that 2K Marin – the studio behind Bioshock 2 – will be handling the series after Bioshock Infinite developer Irrational Games reduced staff numbers earlier this year as a result of the company “winding down.”
“We haven’t given any colour on how you should think about it yet except we do believe it’s beloved; we think it’s important [and] certainly something that we’re focused on; something 2K Marin will be responsible for shepherding going forward. I think there’s a lot of upside in that franchise,” Zelnick said of BioShock. “It hasn’t necessarily been realised yet. It has been a profitable piece of business” with its latest iteration, BioShock Infinite, shifting 6.5 million copies.
So, there you have it, new sequels for BioShock and Red Dead Redemption might be on the horizon. With E3 right around the corner, I would expect to hear some big announcements coming out of there, so stay tuned!