Gearbox: We want Borderlands 2 on PlayStation Vita

Borderlands 2 looks good. Really, really good. So good in fact, that it helped make Gearbox a shining star at E3 2012. With the game just two months away from release, it’s hard to ask for more beyond that it be finished, its campaign be lengthy, and that it’s inevitably supported with the same sort of expansive downloadable content that the studio lavished on the first game.


Actually, there is one thing that would be nice: Portable Borderlands 2. Sitting outside on those early autumn days, basking in the low sunlight and refreshing harvest breeze, shooting poisonous monsters infesting a verdant alien plain while hunting for precious loots. That sounds like an ideal scenario if there ever was one. Gearbox head honcho Randy Pitchford agrees, and that’s why he said this week that he’d especially like to see Borderlands 2 on the PlayStation Vita.

Eurogamer reported on Friday that Pitchford brought up the Vita version of Borderlands 2 during a talk at the UK’s independent games show Rezzed. Between the console and PC version of Borderlands 2 as well as other projects like Aliens: Colonial Marines and Brothers in Arms: Furious 4, Gearbox wouldn’t be able to tackle developing the game themselves. Pitchford wants Sony themselves to get behind it.
“One of the things I wish Sony would do is get behind Borderlands, because I’d love to see a Vita version of the game. I want to be able to have the character I’m working on with my PS3, and then when I’m on the road with my Vita I can just keep developing that same character because it existed on the cloud somewhere,” said Pitchford, “Technologically, that’s possible. Perhaps some of you folks can convince Sony to start that. We’re too busy to develop it ourselves. But I know there are a lot of talented developers who take our code, our source and our content and perhaps create something like that.”
Borderlands 2’s publisher 2K Games is already working on unique Vita content. Studio Irrational Games, creator of BioShock Infinite, is in the preliminary stages of development on an original BioShock game for Vita. A port of Borderlands 2 with cross-platform play would be a much bigger coup for the company than a Vita exclusive title though. Interplay between handheld and console, not console-like experiences on the go, is what will make Vita successful in the long run.
Listen to Pitchford, everyone: Make this game.