MAFIA 3 Dev Opens A New Studio In The UK That Will Work On A Big-Budget Console Game - Possibly BIOSHOCK 4

According to Kotaku editor Jason Schreier, some of the people who have helped to shape Mafia 3 are currently developing an unannounced BioShock game with an assist from 2K Marin, the creators of The Bureau: XCOM Declassified. Both Hangar 13 and 2K Marin are located in Novato, California, so their cooperation would make a perfect sense. Marin has also made BioShock 2's single-player mode.

2K has announced that Hangar 13 is expanding with a new studio located in the UK. Games Industry's Christopher Dring has confirmed that this new development team will be working on an AAA, big-budget game. The team will work alongside Hangar's three existing offices in Novato, Prague and Brno (both Czech Republic) to create a currently "unannounced" major console (and probably PC) game.

"There are various benefits to doing things this way," said Hangar 13's VP of development Andy Wilson. "The first is that increased cultural diversity and representation across the teams is important. If you look at Mafia III, we tackled some difficult subject matter. It required a careful hand. We had a responsibility to do that properly. One of the things that we recognized during the development of that game is that it's easy to develop cultural blind spots, and to end up building a game that makes sense in one part of the world, but really doesn't in another. Our ambition is to make games that are loved all over. The more we can do to diversify the teams, then the more we protect ourselves from potential blind spots."

Considering that Mafia 4 (which was apparently set in Las Vegas during the 1970s) has been cancelled by 2K and Hangar's own IP codenamed Rhapsody (an action game fueled by music [which sounds totally awesome, I know]) has morphed into a standard superhero action game, there's a big chance that Hangar 13 and 2K Marin are currently working hard on the next chapter of the BioShock saga.