Levine: "It’s a great year for the core coming back"

Ken Levine, creative director of Irrational Games, has reaffirmed his commitment to core games, and explained why he thinks the PlayStation Vita and Nintendo are helping to invigorate the genre.

"It's a great year for the core coming back and saying, okay, have your touch screens, have your motion control, we'll try to make that work, and if you can pull that off it'll be really good," said Levine in an interview with IGN.

"But I want to have my cake and eat it too, I think these experiences are starting to allow that to happen," he said of the Wii U's two stick controller design.

"I've always had to sacrifice that core gaming experience when I lie in bed playing games," he explained.

"We're now getting to a place with Vita and what Nintendo's doing where that's not necessarily going to be the case, where you can play full-on hardcore games in bed with the lights out while your wife's asleep. That means a lot to me."

He also spoke about the recently announced Bioshock project for PlayStation Vita handheld, and said he had no interest in making it a more casual style of game.

"That's not the kind of game I'm going to make. It is a core game," said Levine.

"I'm not a huge Fruit Ninja guy, it just doesn't interest me. I respect what those guys do, and obviously they're able to tap into a kind of zeitgeist that is outside what I do, but it's just not me. I'm a core gamer. If you're looking at me to make a game like that, you're probably hiring the wrong dude."

Bioshock Infinite is due for release in 2012.