BioShock 2 due November 3

Other than better-than-expected earnings and lowered fiscal-year guidance, today's Take-Two Interactive earnings call was chock-full of major news items. The New York City-based publisher used the call to reveal that the second Grand Theft Auto IV expansion, The Ballad of Gay Tony, would arrive this fall as both a digital download and part of a stand-alone retail compilation. It also delayed two of its biggest 2009 releases, Red Dead Redemption and Mafia II, until sometime between November 1, 2009 and May 31, 2010. Finally, Take-Two announced that NBA 2K10 would return to the Wii, and that its MLB 2K series has been taken over by NBA 2K developer Visual Concepts.

Besides all that, Take-Two imprint 2K Games has finally dated BioShock 2, the forthcoming sequel to its critically hailed undersea action role-playing game from 2007. The game's official Web site is now touting that the game will ship on October 30 internationally and on November 3 in North America simultaneously for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC. It has not yet been officially rated by the Entertainment Software Ratings Board, but will almost certainly bear an M-for-Mature sticker like its forbearer.

Developed by 2K Marin, BioShock 2 has the rare distinction of being both a sequel and prequel to BioShock. As outlined in GameSpot's recent preview, the single-player campaign is set roughly 10 years after the events in the first game. Players return to the undersea realm of Rapture, donning the diving boots of a prototype "Big Daddy" caught up in a wave of kidnappings by a new creature: the "Big Sister." By contrast, the game's multiplayer component will be set before the internecine conflict that turned the utopian Rapture into a very dystopian place.

In addition to the date reveal, 2K Games has relaunched its teaser site for BioShock 2, Somethinginthesea.com. A rep for the company promised that the site, which revealed the game's aquatic kidnap-spree setup, would be the site of "exciting new updates" in the coming weeks.