It's been quite a few years since we've seen a new Mafia game. The open-world gangster title last left off with Mafia 2 way back in 2010. It would seem fitting that maybe Take-Two and 2K Games would have something in store for gamers given the lapse of five years with no new Mafia titles. That could be changing with a possible new entry in the popular series.
Over on NeoGaf there's a thread showing that Take-Two, the parent company of 2K Games, recently purchased domains for Mafia3TheGame.com, MafiaIIITheGame.com, MafiaThree.com and MafiaThreeTheGame.com.
NeoGaf spotted the change over on the Daily Changes domain tools website, where they noted that Take-Two originally made the purchase of the name server activity back on June 25th, just a few days ago.
It seems a little weird that they would register four domains and not just go with the typical MafiaTheGame.com domain? These days most games running through a franchise just stick with a single name. Companies like Capcom for instance have resolved to simply using ResidentEvil.com as opposed to numerical values thereafter. Even Activision has avoided throwing numbers and subtitles in the domain name and have opted to simply direct people to CallofDuty.com for Call of Duty games.
In fact, in the specific case of Call of Duty there was once an instance where someone purchased up various Call of Duty domains in an attempt to get Activision to pay them for the domains. Yes, it was domain squatting and they were attempting to extort Activision out of some cointo make some gains on said squatting.
But getting back to Mafia... it was already speculated previously that 2K should bring back the series. It's a highly regarded series with a deep and rich theme set around the gangster culture during the early 20th century. The first game was set during the 1930s and the second game followed through with a setting that spanned the 40s and 50s.
The Mafia games were open-world titles much like Grand Theft Auto but they were not quite as satirical or over-the-top. The first game was fairly straight laced and laid the groundwork for copycats like EA's The Godfather. Mafia II took things a step further by making the city even bigger, having the story span the gritty tales of a mobster attempting to rise to power and focusing on the thematic era of the 40s and 50s, just after the war.
A lot of gamers have expressed excitement about the possibility of a third Mafia game because with today's technology it means that 2K Games can things a step further than what they accomplished with the second game. Whether or not a threequel is actually in the works remains to be seen, but we at least know that Take-Two Games are already securing websites for the title and likely gauging the responses across core gaming communities to see whether or not gamers are ready for the criminal underworld title to make an appearance on the eighth-gen consoles.
