Take Two, Irrational's parent company, has renamed the Irrational studios 2K Boston and 2K Australia:
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=27571
It was probably inevitable once Irrational was bought out by Take Two, but it's still sad to see the old name go.
Bioshock comes out next week--here's hoping it does great and the Irrational guys get to make a bunch more games, whatever their offices are called.
In my mind, that's a very bad sign.
By changing their names to match the buying company, they are essentially erasing their separate identity. This may be a sign that the corporation may be exerting more and more direct control over what they make and how, meaning no more doing what they do best, coming up with creative stuff without worrying about sales statistics and what they think they can position on the market all the time.
I don't know how to interpret these things, or, more fundamentally, if there is even anything substantial to interpret from them. Likely not.
T2 didn't buy IG thinking that IG would be an independent entity or even just an in-house development contractor. So, I can't say the name change is that surprising. The fact that T2 has been pouring money into IG (doubling its size) during development of BioShock is probably a good thing for (nee) IG. That doesn't necessarily mean they are any more likely to be working on anything FFish anytime soon, of course.
In the spirit of unfounded speculation, I have noticed a few things that seem true of corporate dynamics. First, once increased, no one likes to decrease head count. In other words, the extra staff IG got while working on BioShock probably isn't going away at the release. Second, no one wants a large subunit of the company to sit idle and that promotes a constant hunt for projects to keep everyone busy. The larger the group of potential idlers, the greater the need for more and larger projects. And, third, good ideas for projects aren't easy to come by and there is a temptation to work on familiar things where expertise is already at hand. That often means sequels. Of course, the commercial disappointment in FFvT3R is something no one is going to want hanging over his project. But, the more often people find themselves sitting in a meeting doing the "what next" dance, the more chances there are to be reminded of FF. (http://home.graffiti.net/stumpyanker:graffiti.net/emoticons/g.gif)
Of course, I don't know why the press release bothers mentioning the new web pages for the Boston and Australia shops, since they are nothing but shell pages, aside from the BioShock newsletter signup. And, though it's no doubt been dead for a long while, I just noticed that the link to buy FFvT3R direct from IG is kaput. (http://home.graffiti.net/stumpyanker:graffiti.net/emoticons/emoticon-cry.gif)