Ken Levine (Creative Director, Ghost Story Games), creator of the BioShock series, unpacks how Judas will be an experience where players influence how relationships and the story unfold: "Characters have always been the driving force in every game we've ever made. Whether fighting beneath the ocean to assassinate Andrew Ryan or escaping a city in the sky with Elizabeth, these personalities have always been at the heart of our stories. But what if you could choose between who to befriend and who to stab in the back? With Judas (coming to PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S), we wanted to craft an experience where these decisions and how the story unfolds is up to you. Because you, as Judas, are the driver of every event in a story with a new cast of characters to get to know—and change—in ways you haven't experienced before in our games.

In Judas, we give you a whole new world to explore: the corridors of the Mayflower, a spacefaring city whose citizens are trained to spy on one another and tear each other apart for the slightest offense. Where machines control every aspect of business, art, and government. The ship's leaders tried to turn you into something you're not: a model citizen. And you sparked a devastating revolution to tear it all down. Do you want to fix what you broke or leave it all to burn? That's a decision only you can make."

2K Games has confirmed that a new Bioshock game is under development. 2K set up a whole new studio, "Cloud Chamber", that will helm development on this (can I say much beloved?) franchise "for the next several years". Cloud Chamber will set up quarters in both San Francisco and Montreal. Kelley Gilmore, who has been attached to Firaxis Studios and worked in other 2K franchises such as XCOM and Sid Meier's Civilization, has been appointed Cloud Chamber's Studio Head.

The new Cloud Chamber studio opens its doors with "a deeply experienced group of game makers, including many responsible for BioShock's principal creation, advancement and longstanding notoriety." No other details were available at time of writing. While it's obviously too soon to scream happily from the top of your lungs (and it usually always is until you've actually finished the game), this is definitely a positive sign for the franchise and all those who value it.

BioShock is like mom's home-cooked meals. You might remember how great they were, but you've certainly forgotten how good they tasted. It's hard to blame anyone given that the last BioShock game was released almost five years ago. And to make matters even worse, the last installment (BioShock Infinite) wasn't even a sequel or a prequel to the previous BioShock 2 game. But fear not, Big Daddy is making his comeback. Kotaku's lengthy article on Hangar 13 revealed that a secret BioShock title, codenamed 'Parkside', is under development. According to Kotaku's report:

A year and a half later, however, Hangar 13 is a far different place. This past year was a turbulent time for the studio, as it floundered while trying to figure out what its next game would be. Many of the people who helped make Mafia III are now gone, including the game's art director, technical art director, senior producers, design director, many design leads, and a number of other key staff. Some left voluntarily; others were let go or asked to move. Some went to other game companies; others moved to the top-secret studio next door to work on an unannounced new BioShock game.

AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced the arrival of its "Never Settle: Reloaded" game bundle, the sequel to last year's monumental "Never Settle" bundle. "Never Settle: Reloaded" delivers by bundling up to four of this year's most anticipated PC games -- "BioShock Infinite" by 2K Games and Irrational Games, "Crysis 3" by Electronic Arts, "DmC Devil May Cry" by Capcom and "Tomb Raider" by Square Enix -- with select AMD Radeon HD 7900 and HD 7800 Series graphics cards. The bundle highlights the continued commitment by AMD to ensure an incredible gaming experience on the world's top PC titles optimized for AMD Radeon graphics cards

"AMD knows gaming and in 2013 we plan to make a huge mark on the industry. Today we begin that journey by showing the world that the best PC game developers are AMD Gaming Evolved partners," said Matt Skynner, corporate vice president and general manager of AMD Graphics. "The 'Never Settle: Reloaded' bundle clearly stands apart from anything else in the market. Gaming has always been, and will remain, the core of the AMD Graphics strategy and success. In 2013, we plan to forge greater inroads into the gaming industry and it begins with packaging this year's biggest games with the best graphics hardware from AMD." The "Never Settle: Reloaded" bundle offers the following games when purchased with select AMD Radeon HD 7900 and HD 7800 Series graphics cards:

Shacknews is reporting BioShock Infinite has been delayed. BioShock Infinite is going through some "tweaks and improvements," according to Irrational's Ken Levine, forcing the company's upcoming shooter into a Q1 2013 release. Oh, and don't plan on reading about it from E3 or GamesCom, either. In a note to fans on the Irrational site, Levine said the size and scope of the game forced them to delay the game until Feb. 26 of next year: "We had a similar experience with the original BioShock, which was delayed several months as our original ship date drew near.

Why? Because the Big Daddies weren't the Big Daddies you've since come to know and love. Because Andrew Ryan's golf club didn't have exactly the right swing. Because Rapture needed one more coat of grimy Art Deco." Levine said they plan to use the time they would normally be preparing for upcoming conventions to refine the game so the next time it is shown, it will be "essentially the product we intend to put in the box." We already knew that Irrational was staying focused on the main game and trying to avoid distractions, but if delaying it a few months will make it play like the originals, then the added wait will be forgotten quickly.

We finally have a concrete release date for BioShock Infinite. Irrational Games has announced that BioShock Infinite will be released on October 16, 2012. "After BioShock, we had a vision for a follow up that dwarfed the original in scope and ambition," said Ken Levine. ""ioShock Infinite has been our sole focus for the last four years, and we can't wait for fans to get their hands on it."

BioShock Infinite will be available on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Windows PC with an international release of October 19, 2012.

Quite possibly one of the most anticipated games of 2009, BioShock 2 has finally been given a set date from publishers 2K Games. Set for a simultaneous release on the Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC on October 30th 2009 internationally, while North America will have to wait another few days for their release on the 3rd November.

The finalists for the 11th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards have been selected, with BioShock (2K Games) taking the lead and receiving a record 12 nominations including the "Overall Game of the Year" award. The nominees list continues with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Activision), Rock Band (MTV Games), Super Mario Galaxy (Nintendo of America) and Valve's Orange Box. The awards ceremony, hosted by Jay Mohr, will take place during The D.I.C.E. Summit 2008 on February 7 at the Red Rock Resort in Las Vegas. Feel free to see all the finalists nominated in 26 categories here.

2K Games owner Take-Two Interactive has officially announced the creation of 2K Marin, a new development studio located at 2K's new headquarters in Novato, California. Said to be creating original intellectual properties as well as assisting with other 2K projects, 2K Marin is reported to be made up of some ex-BioShock (PC, X360) staff. BioShock was developed at 2K's studios in Australia and Boston, a tag-team formerly known as Irrational Games.

We're focused on continuing to bring new brands and cutting-edge gameplay to market with the creation of the 2K Marin studio,

said 2K president Christoph Hartmann.

2K Marin will build upon our success in creating and leveraging AAA franchises.

Spike TV has announced winners for its 5th annual Video Game Awards and their achievements in the gaming world. Game developers and other talented members from across the entertainment world gathered at the Mandalay Bay Events Resort and Casino in Las Vegas to honor this year's accomplishments within the video game community. Hosted by Samuel L. Jackson, the 2007 "Video Game Awards" will premiere on Spike TV Sunday, December 9 (9:00-11:00 PM, ET/PT).

The long-awaited BioShock patch is available a little earlier than expected. Click here to download the PC 1.1 patch (27MB) or here to read the full release notes.

2K Games has announced that a BioShock PC patch and Xbox 360 title update, as well as a free downloadable content pack for both Xbox Live and for the PC, will be released this week. For now, the content pack will include several extra plasmids for players to use while the patch will fix the game's field-of-vision perspective. A full list of bug fixes and everything included in the DLC will be put up on The Cult of Rapture when the downloads become available.

Bit-tech reports that a new 2K Games studio is being founded specifically for the development of BioShock 2. The new studio, 2K Marin, will consist of the remnants from the 2K Boston developer team of the first BioShock. Apparently, not many of the original staff wanted to work with Ken Levine ever again after the first BioShock. 2K Games understood the sentiment and allowed the staff to set up a new studio so they can work on BioShock 2 while leaving Ken in 2K Boston with Project X which has been confirmed as being a new X-Com game.

Anyone who played BioShock last night on the Xbox360 got a seemingly pleasant surprise: there was a patch being installed that would fix some minor in-game issues. More specifically, it "improves stability on autosaves, fixes a bug where an AI will not utilize health stations properly, and fixes a music bug in the title menu". After the patch was applied however, gamers reported several instances of global freezing/glitching, sometimes as often as once every 30 seconds. A 2K Games representative assures us that 2K games is looking closely at the problem, and is working hard to resolve it.

Anyone with an ATI X8x0 series card is pretty angry at the fact that their card cannot handle a game that an X1300 can. Fortunately for gamers that still have a Shader Model 2 card, hackers are working day and night to bring BioShock to said cards. Instead of buying a SM3 or SM4 card that would cost at least $60, old-school gamers can now apply a hack. You can download and read into this hack here. However, while this is all well and good for people with hearty graphics cards, such as the previously mentioned X8x0 series, people still running the Radeon 9x00 series and the NVIDIA GeForce FX series will probably suffer quite low framerates.

Keep in mind that this is still a beta.

We have been reading and listening to your frustrations over SecuROM, PC activation problems, and technical support issues since BioShock launched on Tuesday, and we've devised a plan to help.

Starting immediately, we will be upping the activation count to a 5 by 5 plan. We will be raising the maximum amount of computers a user can have BioShock installed on simultaneously from 2 to 5, and allowing a user to reinstall BioShock on each of those computers from 3 times to 5 times. Also, we have in the works a revoke tool which you will be able to run on your machine if you want to free up that key and move it to to another computer (this works very much like Steam or iTunes system). We are also working with SecuROM and 2K customer service, so that when you do need to call in support problems, you get answers to your questions faster, without much waiting or being bounced around. SecuROM has been given much more autonomy to help fix your problems quickly and effectively. I am personally sorry for anyone who got bounced around in the past couple days (I even think I contributed to this problem) and we're going to make sure that does not happen in the future. As for other technical issues, we are bringing on a team of tech support that will be on the 2K forums 24/7 to help people resolve their technical issues. Our QA guys are in the offices and on the forums, too, reproducing issues and looking for workarounds and compiling information that they can put towards making you a patch and updating the knowledge base.

It appears that players are having problems after reinstalling BioShock a few times. BioShock is using Sony's anti-piracy SecuROM which contacts them with your hardware specifications. SecuROM's website states "Only legitimate customers who have purchased the product are able to unlock the program which is bound to the hardware after activation. This ensures that once activated, it cannot be transferred to another PC and therefore not being mass pirated." Players are reporting after installing the game more than two times will stop the installation process. So not only is it being bounded to your current hardware. It will also lock you out after too many installs.

Valve today announced that 2K Boston and 2K Australia's highly anticipated first person shooter BioShock is now available for pre-order on Steam for the price of $49.95 in the US and $54.95 in Europe. Steam users can now begin downloading the game's assets, which will be unlocked and activated on the release date of the retail version: August 21 in North America and August 24 in Europe. BioShock is a first person shooter (FPS) that lets you do things never before possible in the genre: turn everything into a weapon, biologically mod your body with plasmids, hack devices and systems, upgrade your weapons and craft new ammo variants. According to Irrational Games (now known as 2K Boston and 2K Australia), BioShock is a revolution in the shooter genre that will forever change the expectations for the FPS. You can visit the official BioShock website here.

Xbox 360 got a pleasant surprise on Sunday: a working BioShock demo. Unfortunately, the same could not be said for PC users. 2K Games stated that making a working PC demo was a lot harder than a working Xbox 360 demo, because they have to make it work on a large variety of machines. While Xbox 360 customers are happily fragging each other on (a demo of) one of the most anticipated shooters of the year, PC owners need to wait until the BioShock demo goes through the final stages of QA at 2K Games.

We tried as hard as humanly possible to get it out to you guys simultaneously with the 360 demo, but we needed to make sure that it was perfect -- that all drivers were ready, and that the game looked great on a huge variety of computers

In other news, BioShock: Breaking the Mold, a large artbook containing all sorts of information on the BioShock world (including spoilers), is now available for download.

In BioShock you will walk and dive through the remains of a hidden under water city called Rapture. BioShock will be released in late August of this year for the PC and Xbox 360 and the developers now revealed spectacular footage of the water effects in the game. You will find a mid-quality video online as well as a 65MB 1280x720 HD video which does BioShock's great visual effects much more justice.
If you want to dive into the technical and gameplay aspects of the water features you will find a Question and Answer article over at 2K Games which goes into all the details.

Will there be a difference in the water effects if you are using DX9 or DX10?

JJ: Depending on the performance gain on DX10 hardware, there will potentially be some additional details and effects enabled on these cards.