I'm sure a lot of people are curious why Borderlands: The Handsome Collection contains Borderlands 2 and Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel but it doesn't have the original game jam-packed into the bundle. Well, there's a reason why.
During a panel discussion at this year's PAX South event in San Antonio, Texas, the president of Gearbox Software, Randy Pitchford, answered a few questions and rolled out a few explanations as to why the original isn't set for release this March on the Xbox One and PS4 but Borderlands 2 and Pre-Sequel are. You can check out the minute-long clip below courtesy of IGN.
Pitchford seems to stumble a bit trying to find the words to express the reason as to why the original Borderlands wasn't part of the upcoming pack, but he eventually settles on the lack of budget.
He also explains that Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel wasn't originally designed for the Xbox One and PS4 because of budget and lack of resources. However, that seems kind of strange given that the Xbox One and PS4 both use x86 architecture and if they made a version for PC why wouldn't they have just gone on ahead and made it for the Xbox One and PS4? Technically, it would be more expensive to design a game for PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 from the ground up since all three have varying architectures: Power PC for Xbox 360, x86 for PC and the PS3's proprietary Cell. Porting the game to platforms all using a single uniform architecture would mean less time and money invested into engineers working on the ports for differing architectures. But obviously, Randy Pitchford is the president of Gearbox and if he says it was the budget and team resources that prevented them from getting the Pre-Sequel out on the Xbox One and PS4 last fall... then it was the budget and the resources.
I'm not going to complain about the semantics surrounding the reasons why the game was pushed back for the eighth-gen consoles and bundled together in The Handsome Collection. I'll just get the bundle and mind my own business.
One thing that was kind of weird was that Pitchford exclaims that we'll only see the first Borderlands on the new-gen consoles if The Handsome Collection sells well. I don't really know how to feel about that. On one hand: is there any reason that we would need the original Borderlands on the PS4 and Xbox One if they're already re-releasing the second game and all its DLC for the new-gen consoles? Is there anything in the first game that was done better or bigger than the second? On the other hand: the more games on the new-gen consoles, the better.
However, Gearbox Software lost a lot goodwill with both Aliens: Colonial Marines and Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel because a measure of gamers saw the latter as an expensive cash-grab – that it was just over-priced DLC masquerading as a full game. While just about everyone on Steam agrees that The Pre-Sequel is a fun game, they also have caveats, like this one from Tarious, who writes...
“Is this a bad game? No. Is it worth $60? Hell no. Buy on sale for 50% off, or buy BL2 if you haven't yet.”
We'll see if gamers feel as if all of Borderlands 2's DLC jam packed into a bundle with The Pre-Sequel will be worth $60 for the Xbox One and PS4 come March 24th.
