BioShock Infinite – One to Watch? Levine thinks so.

Irrational Games boss Ken Levine is confident shooter BioShock Infinite will stand out during the busy month of October 2012. Infinite launches in Europe on 19th October, days before Medal of Honor: Warfighter and a week and a bit before Assassin’s Creed 3.

The following November will likely see the launch of the next Call of Duty, the next Need for Speed and Halo 4.

Levine, though, is unconcerned by the heavy hitting competition.

“We don’t have the problem that, say, a Battlefield had last year – and I don’t think they viewed it as a problem, they viewed it as an opportunity – of going up in a head-to-head,” he has said.

“It’s hard to categorise BioShock for people in their heads. It has its own vibe. It’s a strange and different game. In the same way Portal didn’t compete directly with anything. So you don’t worry so much about, oh my god, we’re competing directly with this, what are we going to do?

“Obviously, when you go into that time period you have a positive and negative. The negative is there are a lot of games competing for the dollar or pound of the gamer. Or the euro – I want to be inclusive here. But also there are a lot of people going into stores at that point, and a lot of people buying gifts. It’s a yin and yang situation.”

Irrational settled on the October release because it fit in with the studio’s development cycle. It was then a case of running it by Irrational’s marketing chief before giving the go ahead.

“I don’t think there’s a tonne of science in our industry about these things at this point,” Levine continued. “A lot of it is your gut. You hear, you have to release at Christmas. Others say, you can’t release at Christmas. At the end of the day, the product is pretty unique and will sink or swim on its own merits.

“If it’s a great game I think it will do great. If it’s not a great game, it won’t do great. It’s pretty simple with BioShock.”