Irrational revealing new game this year

Ken Levine has promised that Irrational's new game will be announced this year, sometime after the Game Developers Conference 2010. That takes place in March, which leaves this June's E3 as a prime time and place for the reveal.

"This is the year we'll start talking about stuff, and we stop hiding behind the iron curtain of secrecy," Levine told GameSpot, but refused to budge on specific whens and wheres.

There are around 40 people working full-time at Irrational on the new game, and Levine said production will ramp up to include around 100 personnel during the peak-push period.

Speculators speculate that Irrational will resurrect tactical space game X-Com - a rumour Levine has never quashed.

While the identity of the game may be veiled, Levine's intentions are not. After claiming back the Irrational name and ditching the 2K Boston moniker, every ounce of effort will go into delivering the high quality game the studio's name is synonymous with.

"Irrational has got like an 88 or an 89 game ranking average," added Levine. "All we have is our quality."

"People hired us because they knew we made something good even if it maybe didn't sell 3 million units or 3.5 million units like BioShock did."

Levine created BioShock but has had nothing to do with the sequel, BioShock 2, development of which is being lead by 2K Marin and contributed to by Digital Extremes, 2K Australia, 2K China and Arkane Studios.

"I never want to take credit for anything that's awesome but I didn't do," said Levine, explaining that if he's "in for a penny" he's "in for a pound". "And my feeling is that, hopefully, BioShock 2 is going to be awesome."

BioShock 2 will be released on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 on 9th February. Read our January 2010 hands-on impressions to find out how the sequel's shaping up.