Gearbox discarded Blade Runner IP
"Would have been the end of us."
Borderlands maker Gearbox owned the Blade Runner IP but passed up the opportunity to make a game with it.
Studio boss Randy Pitchford said it would have been too costly and would have sold poorly.
"Blade Runner was on [the list]," he told Official PlayStation Magazine via CVG.
"We had it too and we were like, 'No, we can't.' That game would've cost like $40 million to make and sold about 600,000 units - and that would have been the end of us.
"There's no rational business model that would have allowed that to make sense," he added. "If we'd made it with a business model that did work, it would not have been the Blade Runner game we all would have wanted."
Blade Runner, a 1982 film directed by Ridley Scott, presented an iconic vision of a futuristic city. Its influence can be seen far and wide, including in Square Enix's upcoming Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and in Epic Games' demonstration of the next-generation Unreal Engine.
Gearbox Software most recently created Duke Nukem Forever and is working on Aliens: Colonial Marines now for Sega.