Gamasutra recently had the rare opportunity to interview Dan Houser regarding Max Payne 3. While the interview in it's entirety is a great read, two key questions were asked: why Max and why did it take so long?

When asked why it was has taken so long to bring back Max, Houser stated "Basically we have been meaning to start it for a while, but we have limited bandwidth and limited studios, and more games to make than we've started. So suddenly it was a good slot." Houser added, " Also, contrary to a lot of people, we like to take a little bit of time at the end of a game before starting a sequel, so we can wait for the excitement or disappointment and everything else of the experience to shake down and really see what we should do in the next game."

So what about Bully? Outside of the current gen version, Rockstar has been very quiet on the franchise. On the subject of Bully, Houser stated "So we knew that we didn't want to start doing the sequel instantly at that second with those guys -- even though it is a property that, like Max, we adore and might come back to in the future. There was just no impetus to do that then.", adding " So we said, "You can do Max, and then we will see what we can do with Bully." So it was really waiting for the slot to open up and the group to open up to at least start work on it."

It stands to reason that once Max is done, there is a very high possibility that Bully 2 will see the light of day. With many marking the lack of Bully talk as the death of the IP, this should come as a sigh of relief to many Bully fans out there.

Source: Gamasutra