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BioShock For PS3 Goes Gold, Demo Hits Thursday
Posted by Michael McWhertor at 5:30 AM on September 30, 2008
Heads up, kids. According to official word from 2K Games, the PlayStation 3 port of BioShock has "gone gold," with a shiny master disc containing final code of the game probably being transported by aluminium brief case from 2K Marin to the manufacturing plant right now. It's likely handcuffed to a trained courier who has authority to shoot you should you come within ten yards of the golden disc. Seriously, that's how this stuff works.
If you want to get a taste of last year's Xbox 360 super hit, a demo will be hitting the PlayStation Store in North America this Thursday. BioShock hits retail in North America on October 21 and goes global on October 17. Who's buying?
Some people didn't like BioShock's ending. It was constricting, people complained. Maybe you didn't, maybe you did. But for better or worse, rest assured the Xbox 360's ending will be the same as the PS3's. According to PS3 version's senior producer, Melissa Miller:
Yes, yes, game movies suck. Everybody knows that! So whenever a big time video game is turned into a big time movie, all we can do is grit our teeth and hope that it doesn't suck too much. When it was announced that Bioshock was going to be a movie, many thought, hey, this might have a chance to make the cinematic leap in a positive way. The story and the universe do seem very amicable to film. Then it was announced that Pirates of the Caribbean director Gore Verbinski would be helming the project and the wind was taken out of everyone's sails. Sure, he turned a Disneyland ride into a movie, but as the franchise continued on, his ability (or rather inability) to tell a proper story became readily apparent. But Ken Levine isn't going to get in Verbinski's way while the director and writer John Logan. Rather, Levine describes his role:
What, PS3 owners, you never played BioShock on 360 or PC? Not even for a minute? How the hell are you meant to make an informed purchasing decision without some hands-on time with the game and? How the hell indeed. You're getting a demo, and you're getting it soon, with 2K announcing that one will be made available "worldwide" on October 2. Before you scramble for a calendar, that's just under three weeks away.
The PC version of BioShock featured some nasty, nasty SecuROM copy protection. Almost a year later, all BioShock PC DRM 
Sure, that PS3 BioShock trailer looks nice and all, but here's something that's not as nice. The game features a 5GB mandatory install. It takes a little over ten minutes. Word of something like this first came back in July when the BBFC rated the title as having an install of "around 5 or 6 minutes". Like 'em or not, mandatory installs seem like they're here to stay — much to the dismay of those owning the 20GB and 60GB launch model PS3s. Need more space!
Gamasutra has published a postmortem for the hugely successful Bioshock; nothing contained within is particularly shocking (though comments have groused that they left out some big snafus), though I think it's always interesting to see what participants in the creation process have to say about the success (or lack thereof). The article goes beyond game elements and gets into things like how design teams were organised. But where does Alyssa Finley, project lead, have to say about the problems the Bioshock team ran into?:
These are courtesy of the kids over at Pixelation's forums. Last year, they ran a little contest. See who could come up with the best mock-ups for a remake - or demake - of a game crammed onto the original Game Boy. While some are unrecognisable, and a few are only "OK, I guess", the rest are "totally awesome, I guess". Especially the BioShock one. The rest of them to can be found at 
