Pitchford has “promoted Steve Jones to President of Gearbox Software while he steps up to grow new business units for Gearbox Entertainment as a whole,” Gearbox says.

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While Gearbox has done a lot of things over the years, it’s most noted for its Borderlands franchise. The series has had three mainline entries, all of which have been successful, and a number of spin-offs with the latest one coming next year in the RPG-focused Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands. The franchise will also be coming to other media as a film adaptation is coming soon. It also seems like one of the men behind the series will be changing his role.

Gearbox Software’s Randy Pitchford will now be stepping down from the position of President, as reported by IGN and elaborated on by Pitchford himself via Twitter (which you can see below). He won’t be leaving the company as a whole, however, and will remain as CEO of the parent company, Gearbox Entertainment. Instead he will shift his focus to the newly formed Gearbox Studios that will handle film and television, where he will also served as President. Steve Jones, who was the Chief Technology Officer for Gearbox Software, will take Pitchford’s place.

As of now, the Borderlands film has no solid date, but Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands will launch March 25th 2022 for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One and PC.

Congratulations to Steve Jones, who I have recently promoted to become President of Software at The Gearbox Entertainment Company. Attached is a diagram of the high level organization chart along with excerpts from my internal staff letter announcing the promotion. pic.twitter.com/4FeX94SIW2

— Randy Pitchford (@DuvalMagic) October 6, 2021

Coming back from a hiatus of seven years (or five, if you count Pre-Sequel), Borderlands 3 is a game that we all have high hopes for. And at least as far as the amount of content it will offer to players even at launch is concerned, it’s looking like it’s going to live up to those lofty expectations. Gearbox Software have spoken about how the main campaign is 30-35 hours long – and that’s if you’ve only done a few side missions the entire time – so it’s clear that there will be a lot to dive into in the looter shooter.

Recently, while speaking with GamingBolt in a group interview, Anthony Nicholson – senior producer on the game – also touched on that topic, saying that the game is going to have “a ton of content”, and that it’s “much bigger than Borderlands 2 (which was a pretty big game to begin with).

“It’s much bigger than Borderlands 2,” said Nicholson. “There’s all different types of side missions, there’s the main mission, of course. Then there’s other things like all of the different challenges that we have: like the rare spawns, and the enemy hunts, the crew challenges. There’s so much to do in the game that I can’t express enough. And those are just different mission type things you can do. There’s also exploration, boss runs, things like that. So there’s a ton of content.”

We’ve certainly been getting tastes of all the ways the game is expanding over its predecessors- more guns, more co-op features, more systems, and multiple planets. It stands to reason that in terms of playable content, too, the game will go bigger and better.

There’s not long left before we find out for ourselves anyway. After having recently wrapped up development, Borderlands 3 is out on September 13 for the PS4, Xbox One, and PC.

It’s been made clear by now that Borderlands 3 will indeed have microtransactions – the cosmetic kind at the very least – following confusing messaging by developers Gearbox Software about the same during the recent gameplay event. But Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford is adamant that the messaging wasn’t really confusing at all, and that he’d been clear right from the get go that though the game will have cosmetic in-game purchases, there won’t be any pay-to-win microtransactions.

For context, here is what Pitchford said on stage during the event: “I’m sure we’re going to do all kinds of fun customizations like heads and skins, but we’re not doing any of that free-to-play junk. There’s not going to be any microtransactions, there’s not going to be any of that nonsense.”

In a lengthy statement on Twitter, however, Pitchford says that in context of the situation, as well as the context of what Gearbox’s practices with Borderlands have been in the past, the meaning of his statements during the reveal event should have been abundantly clear.

Pitchford brought up the game’s support of offline play and splitscreen co-op, and how it wouldn’t be catering to the games-as-a-service model, as he argued that the crux of his statements was that the game wouldn’t be supporting free-to-play monetization, just as the series never has in the past as well.

At this point though, one has to wonder what the point of all this is- there was unclear messaging to begin with, and the messaging was subsequently made clear. Since we now know that Borderlands 3 will have microtransactions, what’s the point of arguing that no one ever suggested that it wouldn’t- even though inferring that from “there’s not going to be any microtransactions” isn’t exactly a leap?

Borderlands 3 is out on September 13 for the PS4, Xbox One, and PC- on that front there is no confusion.

/6 While on-stage I affirmed my commitment that Borderlands 3 was designed to be what a Borderlands game is supposed to be. I talked about story, style and design.

— Randy Pitchford (@DuvalMagic) May 2, 2019

/7 I talked about our commitment to, for example, continued support of local split screen coop and off-line play – this in a world where shooter looters are forcing on-line only game-as-service models only.

— Randy Pitchford (@DuvalMagic) May 2, 2019

/8 I made a commitment that Borderlands 3 would be supported after launch with big, fun, valuable campaign DLC and character modifications. I made a commitment to this feeling right-at-home to players of previous Borderlands games.

— Randy Pitchford (@DuvalMagic) May 2, 2019

/9 Our post launch plans are in flux as we are finishing the main game, but we have committed to a robust season pass that I am confident will be measurable later as an even better value proposition than Borderlands 2, which is the reigning gold standard for season pass value.

— Randy Pitchford (@DuvalMagic) May 2, 2019

/10 Our post-launch plans are in flux, but I made a commitment that Borderlands 3 would not pursue F2P style monetization.

— Randy Pitchford (@DuvalMagic) May 2, 2019

This is incorrect. Please respect the context of the ten sentences prior to the sentence you reference along with the history of the Borderlands franchise on this point. The sum of that context is wholly exonerating of any claims of willful misinformation.

— Randy Pitchford (@DuvalMagic) May 3, 2019

After Bungie parted ways with Microsoft, leaving behind the Halo franchise with them to work on Destiny, Microsoft was left with the question of who to hand their most important and prestigious franchise to. With hindsight, we know they set up a brand new studio, 343 Industries, to head the brand and be its custodian—but that wasn’t the only option in consideration at the time.

Speaking to IGN’s podcast IGN Unfiltered, 343 Industries’ Bonnie Ross revealed that there was a bit of uncertainty within Microsoft regarding how to handle the transition away from Bungie with Halo at the time. Microsoft had considered either handing the franchise to Gearbox — who admittedly did have some experience with the IP, thanks to their work on the well received PC port of Halo: Combat Evolved — or ending the franchise altogether, noting that Halo 3 provides enough closure to be able to call it quits there.

However, Ross, who was attached to the Halo franchise, and responsible for Microsoft’s internal and external publishing efforts at the time, felt that either option would be tantamount to “blasphemy”, and therefore pitched her vision for Halo’s future. The pitch was so successful that she ended up being given the keys to the franchise, and the rest, since then, is history.

Said history includes multiple mistakes made along the way (as Ross herself has admitted), but for now, the future of the franchise looks bright. At the very least we have been told that Halo Infinite will not repeat the mistakes that its predecessor did.

Take 2 may have an unnaturally empty slate of games this year, but it looks like it is already billing its next financial year to be one of its best. In a statement to investors released at a financial call, Take 2 teased that the 2018-19 financial year would be record breaking for it, led by the launch of Red Dead Redemption 2, and the launch of a brand new, highly anticipated game in one of Take 2’s biggest franchises.

“That said, we still expect fiscal 2018 to be a year of strong earnings and cash provided by operating activities for Take-Two, despite an unusually light release slate, driven by new releases of NBA 2K and WWE 2K, our robust catalog led by Grand Theft Auto, and innovative offerings designed to drive engagement and recurrent consumer spending,” Take 2 said. “Looking ahead to fiscal 2019, we expect to deliver both record Net Sales and record net cash provided by operating activities, in excess of $2.5 billion and $700 million, respectively, led by the launches of Rockstar Games’ Red Dead Redemption 2 and a highly anticipated new title from one of 2K’s biggest franchises.”

Whatever could this new franchise be? It’s a big money spinner, which means we’re left with very few possibilities- Grand Theft Auto, Max Payne, Borderlands, or Civilization. Civilization just had a new entry last year, so that’s out, and Rockstar is unlikely to release a new Red Dead and GTA both next year. So… Borderlands? We already know that’s in the work, so they are probably referring to that with this statement.

What do you think it is?

2K Games are going all in on Simplygon- the 3D optimization solution will be used by 2K in two of its most anticipated games of this year, Mafia 3 and Battleborn, Simplygon has confirmed today. 2K will be using Simplygon to automate pipelines, allowing artists to spend less time on manual labor, and more on delivering stunning, next generation graphics.

“2K has always been a visionary in the games industry, and over the past decade has continuously redefined both narrative and graphical possibilities. With Simplygon we’re enabling creators like 2K to focus more on the creative parts of development while we automate multiple production processes and improve the performance,” Martin Ekdal, Co-founder and Vice President of Business Development at Simplygon, said.

More and more games are moving to use Simplygon, as we move into an era of free to play titles and longer development cycles for AAA games. By making the process quicker while still allowing for impressive results, Simplygon is simply a far more efficient solution for a lot of developers than their own pipelines would be a lot of times.

The team looks at various aspects this time around, from properly crafting an aura of tension, suspense and horror to exploring new environments and better expanding on areas only briefly touched upon in the movies.

An inherent feeling of awesome mixed with insanity – referred to as “Bad-ass” – is also something the team wants to exploit. Because quite frankly, “sharing is caring” can only get you so far when Xenomorphs are rampaging.

From story details – the game being a sequel to the movies – the weapon details and characterisations, Gearbox seems poised to deliver an update to one of the most revered sci-fi franchises of all time.

And hey, it can’t be any worse than Prometheus, right (fingers crossed)?

Aliens: Colonial Marines will be published by Sega and is set to release for PC, Playstation, XBox 360, OnLive and Wii U in February 2013.