Gearbox Wants to Make a New Duke Nukem Game

The CEO of Gearbox revealed that his company is planning a new Duke Nukem title and looking for the right developer this time.

While speaking during his opening keynote address at Develop: Brighton (courtesy of IGN), Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford admits that his company is giving the Duke another chance. Pitchford alluded to Duke Nukem Forever's overwhelmingly negative response, as many gamers were met with a mediocre game that was in development for simply far too long. Nevertheless, there are fans (including myself) that genuinely loved Duke Nukem 3D and some of the series' previous titles who'd like to see a proper Duke title that wasn't as horrible as Forever was.

Here's what Pitchford had to say about the Duke and his next adventure:

I did not acquire the franchise merely so we could all experience Duke Nukem Forever. That was the toll to pay to give Duke a chance. That said, I liked that game. I got to see it from a slightly different perspective and it was marvelous to me.

We’ve done some concept development [for a new game] and I think the challenges are there. Gearbox is very busy. I think the faster way is that a correct developer can become interested and we can work with them. I think it’s a challenging problem. But, I’ll tell you one thing. When it does happen, there’s no doubt that the whole industry will turn its head and look.

Getting attention is one of the hardest things to do. In fact, that’s probably the biggest challenge that [Duke Nukem] Forever had. For 10 years, these guys promised that it was going to be the greatest game ever right? It was legendary in its vapourware status. So it has this particular pole of attention that makes it probably three or four times more famous than Borderlands as a franchise. Not necessarily from a gamer's [perspective] that are really clued in to what’s going on in game development in the industry, but certainly among the greater whole community.

There you have it, folks. While Gearbox is busy (likely with the yet-to-be-announced Borderlands 3), they're starting concept development on where they want to take Duke Nukem next. Let's just hope they're all out of gum.

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