And don’t get us started on Grand Theft Auto 6.<\/p>\n
But the wait for one big title, Borderlands 4, is finally over, six years after its predecessor came out.<\/p>\n
“I’m freaking out. It’s wild,” Randy Pitchford, head of developer Gearbox, tells BBC Newsbeat.<\/p>\n
Borderlands is, quietly, one of the most successful game series launched in the past 20 years.<\/p>\n
A mixture of first-person shooter and role-playing game, part one stood out in 2009 thanks to its cartoonish art style, edgy humour and co-operative multiplayer modes.<\/p>\n
Players take on the role of vault hunters, tasked with gathering loot on an alien world where they meet a cast of wacky characters and over-the-top enemies.<\/p>\n
The series has never swept an awards ceremony, but it’s debatable whether it ever tried to.<\/p>\n
Journalist Ash Parrish, of tech website The Verge, tells Newsbeat the game “turns off your brain and turns on the fun”.<\/p>\n
“The core ethos in Borderlands is that there’s going to be a lot of shooting and a lot of dumb humour,” she says.<\/p>\n
“That’s sometimes all you want out of a video game.”<\/p>\n
It’s been a winning formula for the series, which has sold 94 million copies since the first game, putting it in a similar league to titles such as Tomb Raider and games based on the Harry Potter films.<\/p>\n
“It shouldn’t be as successful as it is,” says studio boss Randy.<\/p>\n
“It should be a super, super-niche thing.<\/p>\n
“We have somehow reached people, which is awesome.”<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/6f88e3a107bc406dc9b14b32ad1ee3a0.jpeg\"\/)
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Borderlands was adapted into an unsuccessful movie but Randy Pitchford, pictured with Jamie Lee Curtis on a red carpet, says the experience is one he doesn’t regret [Getty Images]<\/p>\n
Success can be a blessing and a curse in video games. Critical acclaim can mean big sales, which help to fund your next work.<\/p>\n
But praise also brings pressure to improve on what came before, and those expecrations only grow as the gap between releases widens.<\/p>\n
Game development is notoriously complex, but Randy says it pays to take time to get things right, repaying the “trust and confidence” gained from previous games.<\/p>\n
But he acknowledges a desire to “exceed expectations” with each new release.<\/p>\n
“It’s pretty hard and it takes time. It’s not something we can rush.”<\/p>\n
If the game doesn’t live up to expectations, he says, there’s a risk fans will turn away from the series.<\/p>\n
But there are other forces at work.<\/p>\n
Ash says advances in technology have made development times longer.<\/p>\n
The recent state of the games industry, “with lots of firings, studios closing down and games getting cancelled,” is another big factor, she says.<\/p>\n
She points out that Gearbox itself had a turbulent time, going independent before being acquired and sold off again to GTA publisher 2K.<\/p>\n
“That leads to a lot of churn in terms of your employees,” says Ash.<\/p>\n
“A lot of the knowledge is stored up in the minds of developers.<\/p>\n
“When you lose employees you lose a lot of wisdom, and any game getting made is like a miracle.”<\/p>\n
In some cases, this can effectively mean “starting over” as new staff get up to speed, she says.<\/p>\n
Developers also face pressure from investors who buy shares in companies, says Ash, whose expectations can also be sky-high.<\/p>\n
“Everything that comes out has to be bigger, better and has to take advantage of all these technologies,” she says.<\/p>\n
“And that takes a lot of time.”<\/p>\n
The longer something takes, the more it costs to make, which can affect the amounts investors receive.<\/p>\n
“If that line is not going up as fast as they want it to\u2026 then you’re done,” says Ash. “That’s it.”<\/p>\n
Randy, perhaps unsurprisingly, puts a more positive spin on the situation.<\/p>\n
He says new technologies have allowed Borderlands to “live up to the ambition we’ve always had”, and says number four “is by far the biggest thing we’ve ever done”.<\/p>\n
The latest instalment allows players to roam an open world environment with larger areas, in contrast to the smaller levels in previous games.<\/p>\n
“If you look at the moon in the sky – you can get there, seamlessly.<\/p>\n
“Which is kind of astonishing from a technology point of view,” he says.<\/p>\n
Randy also insists that he concerns himself more with actually making games than with sales figures or what investors say.<\/p>\n
“When the games sell, we get to make more,” he says.<\/p>\n
“If the suits are happy with the commercial results then we get more fuel to go deeper down this crazy rabbit hole that we’re in, which is freaking awesome.”<\/p>\n
So far, the waiting seems to have paid off for Borderlands 4.<\/p>\n
The game has received positive reviews from critics, and was one of the most-played games on PC platform Steam 24 hours after its launch, although some players encountered bugs and crashes.<\/p>\n
Ash, whose review praised the game<\/a> for leaving the tried-and-tested formula alone, wasn’t especially wowed by the new open world, but found a lot to enjoy<\/p>\n And in a world where 10-year waits for sequels are not unheard of, six for Borderlands 4 doesn’t seem like such a bad deal.<\/p>\n “It’s a long time\u2026 but not as long as it could be,” she says.<\/p>\n [BBC]<\/p>\n Listen to Newsbeat live<\/a> at 12:45 and 17:45 weekdays – or listen back here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“It’s been 84 years…” or so says the meme. For video game fans, it can certainly feel like…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":140957,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[75768,75769,49,48,75766,61,75767],"class_list":{"0":"post-140956","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-ash-parrish","9":"tag-borderlands-4","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-canada","12":"tag-randy-pitchford","13":"tag-technology","14":"tag-video-game-fans"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140956\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/0ff97e7cc02598bd6d295b5d2cf278bd.jpeg\"\/)
<\/p>\n