Sid Meier Appearing At New York Comic Con

Mafia II, sequel to multi million seller Mafia, is under development for a simultaneous release on the PC, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, 2K Games announced today.

Mafia II will expand upon the original game, giving players a chance to play through mob life in the 1950s, according to the publisher. 2K Czech, the developers for the original Mafia and of Hidden & Dangerous, are working on the sequel.

Mafia II

Sid Meier's world building game Civilization is returning soon with a new title, Civilization: Revolution. CR is the first of the Civ franchise to be presented on now-gen consoles and it sports some fancy new graphics, closer cameras, new character models and more detailed maps and battles. After my time with the multiplayer mode a few weeks back, I'm really looking forward to checking it our when it hits on June 3.

For those interested in such micromanaging pursuits can check out everything the game has to offer on Civilization: Revolution's newly launched website. It's a nicely put together site and has a decent amount of places for you to explore including videos, screenshots, forums and all the information on Civilization: Revolution you could want.

Civilization: Revolution Official Site [2K]

Take-Two Interactive announced today that Gearbox Software's Borderlands, which was announced this past summer for a Holiday 2008 release, won't be hitting until some time in 2009. The PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC sci-fi shooter was shown to press at the Leipzig Games Convention last fall—then shown to the public at the Spike VGAs—wasn't playable at the time and appeared to be very early.

According to Take-Two, the delay is due to the need "to allow additional development time for this highly anticipated game and provide a better balance in the release of Take-Two's triple-A titles."

Take-Two Interactive announced today that BioShock 2 was officially in the works, under the development wing of the recently formed 2K Marin studio. The sequel—rumored to actually be a prequel—to the Xbox 360 and PC shooter is planned for a fourth-quarter fiscal 2009 release date. Take-Two's fiscal year ends October 31, so expect it to hit unspecified platforms (read: Xbox 360) before the '09 holidays.

Take-Two also noted that the original BioShock has 2 million unit sales under its belt since its August '07 release. No pressure, 2K Marin! No pressure at all.

Bioshock Now Just $30 On Steam

While those who still haven't played Bioshock probably aren't F5ing Kotaku all day to find out where they can score the game on the cheap, know that Bioshock is now just $29.95 on Steam. That's a damn fine deal. I myself will be making time for a replay after attending 2K's presentation on the game's incredible audio design. You know, if I ever catch up with everything on my to-play list (which will absolutely never happen, unfortunately).

Bioshock [Steam via Maxconsole]

Ladies and gentlemen, for your viewing pleasure, I present a slew of screens from my hands-on time with Sid Meier's Civilization Revolution for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. There are some multiplayer shots in here as well as images from the single player mode including many of the character designs.

Civilization's first original foray onto consoles is just a few short month's away, as 2K Games announces the official release date for Sid Meier's Civilization Revolution. Beginning June 3rd, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Nintendo DS owners will finally get a taste of what PC gamers have been going crazy about for over 17 years. Designed from the ground up with consoles in mind, Revolution promises fast-paced action and easy to pick up gameplay while still maintaining the Sid Meier-style addictive feel of its PC predecessors. In honor of the release date, 2K has released a slew of screenshots in both DS and Xbox 360 flavors, and you know how much we love our slews.

2K Games has licensed the Unreal Engine 3 for multiple "unannounced games in development." Many of you will remember that Bioshock was UE3 based, and while this news doesn't point to "ZOMG Bioshock 2," it does lend a bit of credence to the capabilities and ease of use of the UE3 engine...a reputation that's been in question by some, especially with 2K's president going on record to say things like "2K had a very positive experience working with Epic's Unreal Engine 3 since it enables games to perform exceptionally well on both console and the PC." Plus, wow, we can't believe Bioshock 2 has been announced with such little fanfare (joke, btw, I don't want to see that quote floating around the internet this afternoon....maybe I should delete it...nah.) Here's the full tale from the mouth of PR.

Bioshock Bastardizing To Cellphones

The next installment of Bioshock is closer than you think, but it's coming in straight-to-cellphone form. Developed by IG Fun, the studio behind titles like Rush Hour 3 (the game) and Playboy Pool, who can predict what delights that the company surely has in store for phone gamers? But we're guessing—mind you, we don't want to get ahead of ourselves here—that Bioshock Mobile won't quite capture the brilliant atmospherics of the original. But we'd LOVE to be proven wrong. (But we won't be.)

BioShock Being Squeezed Into Cell Phones [Gamelife]

Rockstar Blames PS3 (In Part) For GTA IV Delays

When GTA IV was delayed last year, neither investors nor gamers were happy. And many of us pointed the finger at the PS3 for the reported "technical" problems during Rockstar's joint PS3/Xbox 360 development process. According to Rockstar's VP of Product Development Jeronimo Barrera, we weren't so crazy.

It's really no surprise to anybody that the PS3 was definitely a contributing factor to [the delay].

Reader Jonathan shot us an email and this photo evidence today to let us know that the replacement Big Daddy figures 2K promised back in August have started showing up on doorsteps. While they don't have any Little Sisters in tow, they are accompanied by fancy Bioshock art books, well worth the wait, I'd say. Check out a glimpse of the art book on the jump and another fancy in-focus one by reader DrcAnjel.

BioShock Is Just Robocop

I just read the most amazing little write-up by Steve Hogarty over at PCZone. He theorizes that BioShock is based upon RoboCop, a sort of archetypal allusion, breaking the argument down point by point. Interesting parallels include conflicts in programming, humanizing flashbacks, big daddies (remember those faceless ED-209's?), shameful period advertising and even the titles 'BioShock' and 'RoboCop' when broken down into syllabicate structures. The only element I see missing is the Little Sisters...yeah, my mind just can't fill in that gap with literary theory.

Hit up the link and give the piece a read, then let me know what you think. I, for one, recently DVR'd RoboCop and will be rewatching it in the near future while annoying my wife with "you SO should have played BioShock!" comments.

BioShock = RoboCop [pczone] Thanks Steve!

BioShock Devs Desperately Seeking PS3 Programmers

As much as we'd like to hold the physical embodiment of the rumor that BioShock is coming to the PlayStation 3 under water until we've forced it to spill the beans (or simply kill it), we can't do that and make it go away. In time with EGM recently regurgitated the rumor that BioShock would be "Cell-enabled" in 2008 comes new job listings at 2K Boston clearly indicating that some sort of work is happening on the PS3. Compound that with further rumors that a BioShock prequel is in the works and, well, you wind up with absolutely no confirmation and a bit of a headache.

2K Boston (nee Irrational) has plenty of other titles under its belt and the recently formed 2K Marin is said to have taken the BioShock reins anyway, so all this speculation could point to something else entirely. Whatever the case, having the BioShock team's next effort more widely available is good news for gamers.

Programming Jobs [2KBoston via PS3Fanboy]

I've had a pet project I've been working on for years, three of them if my memory is right. It started as a simple idea: You can judge a lot from a person's desk. I bet you could judge just as much from their home entertainment system. So I decided it would be fun to try and track down some pictures from the work desks and home gaming set-ups of the people who work in and cover the video game industry. Simple right? Not so much.

Turns out that many of the people are either too busy or too private to want to participate in such a project. To make matters worse, there's always fear that something sitting on someone's desk, that ends up in a photo, could actually be news worthy. Like a secret project or the next big thing. But I didn't give up and about once a year I'd harass a bunch of game developers for photos. Finally, this year, the harassment paid off.

What started as a trickle of photos turned quickly into the collection of galleries you'll find on the jump: More than 40 different photo galleries from 17 studios, seven publications, two industry movers and shakers and a couple of fun surprises.

You'll get to see the desk of such greats as Sid Meier, Peter Molyneux and Tetsuya Mizuguchi along with plenty of others. Remember you can comment both on the next page and on each individual photo if you click on them.

If I find there is interest, I will try to periodically update this gallery of galleries with more developers, journalists and industry movers and shakers. Have fun.

Bioshock Creator Craves Smash Bros. Brawl and WoW

This may disappoint some people with this, but the game I'm looking forward to in 2008 is Smash Bros [Brawl]...[and] now that I finally managed to crack my way into Outland, I'm now psyched for the next WoW expansion.

Analyst "Convinced" That Take-Two Will Be Swallowed

Take-Two bigwig Strauss Zelnick may not be interested in selling the company to another buyer, but Janco Partners analyst Mike Hickey says the publisher "will eventually be acquired at a meaningful premium to their current share price." Hickey values the Rockstar Games portfolio alone at about $1 billion, which doesn't even begin to cover the other big Take-Two intellectual properties—BioShock, Carnival Games, Civilization—all of which could make the company very attractive to buyers. Sure, it may involve a few headaches when Manhunt 3 kills some poor grandmother because it's just that dangerous, but you've gotta break a few eggs.

Hickey also points to "opportunities" in the GameDaily BIZ report, such as sequels to Red Dead Revolver, Max Payne and a theoretical Grand Theft Auto MMO as nice-to-haves. Maybe I'll just buy them and expense it.

Take-Two Acquisition Looming, Predicts Analyst [GameDaily.biz]