UpOff.com

By Matt Leone

A few months ago, 2K was betting big on the 2009 holiday, with three key action games — Borderlands, BioShock 2, and Mafia 2 — scheduled to hit within a few months of each other. But then, as is quickly becoming trendy, the publisher decided to hold back the latter two until 2010, leaving Borderlands on its own this year. Following that news, I talked at length with company president Christoph Hartmann about everything from the reasons why they held those back, to his take on new ways of selling games, his interest in Microsoft and Sony’s motion controllers, 2K Marin’s future, and those hints about a Darkness sequel that came out at Comic-Con.

1UP: From my perspective, the trend for 2K in the past year or two — with Borderlands, BioShock 2, Mafia 2, and even the hints that Ken Levine has been giving about his next game — seems to be that you guys are going with fewer, bigger games. Is that how you see it?

Chistoph Hartmann: Well, totally. I mean fewer, bigger games — that was always actually the strategy from the beginning, except we didn’t go and announce it because what’s the point if you don’t have games to prove it? When we set up 2K four years ago, it was always the goal to do fewer games, better games. And that has to do with where the market is going and also to do with the way we’re structured. We’re like this petite gaming powerhouse who wants to be the Miramax of video gaming: great titles, commercially very successful, but also winning Oscars.