'Consumers are not okay with okay': Take-Two boss says BioShock 4 is taking so long because the company's goal is 'to make the best entertainment, not necessarily the most entertainment'

Six years after BioShock 4 was first confirmed, it is not going well: Bloomberg said last week that the game had failed a recent development review, leading to the removal of studio head Kelley Gilmore and shift of creative director Hogarth de la Plante to a publishing role, and a planned overhaul of parts of the game itself. Despite those struggles, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick promises, unequivocally, that it's not at risk of cancellation.

"It’s going to come out," Zelnick told IGN. "That I can say hand on heart, without question."

Zelnick acknowledged that "we have had some ups and downs along the way," but also said that current developer Cloud Chamber has "very big shoes to fill on BioShock because of the legacy of Ken Levine, the legacy of what has gone before, which has been so successful."

"We need to make sure that this experience is true to the BioShock DNA on the one hand, and a massive step forward on the other hand," Zelnick said. "That's always challenging. We think we're up to the challenge, but it has not been seamless."

Zelnick also said big-budget game development cycles are getting longer because "consumers seek quality," and that takes time.

"Everyone realizes that the consumer is highly demanding and properly so," Zelnick said. "The strategy of this company has always been to make the best entertainment, not necessarily the most entertainment. Of course, sometimes we've fallen short, but frankly a precious few times.

"And I think some of our competitors have realized maybe a little late in the day that consumers are not okay with okay. Good is the new bad, great is the new great. And our goal here is to make everything exceptional."

Take-Two's biggest game series, Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption, are notoriously slow cookers, but they're also virtually unparalleled successes: The company said in its Q1 2026 financial results that the Grand Theft Auto series has now sold nearly 455 million units in total, including more than 215 million copies of GTA 5 alone, while the Red Dead Redemption series has sold more than 104 million copies. Numbers like that demonstrate the value of patience, and more importantly they enable Take-Two to take its time with its most valuable properties—like, for instance, BioShock.