The Borderlands spinoff looter-shooter Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands is pretty good, if you’re into that sort of thing, and it was apparently something of a surprise hit too: Publisher Take-Two Interactive said in 2022 that the game “outperformed our expectations” and was “the best new franchise launch from 2K in several years.” Given all that, you might have expected more Tiny Tina to happen in fairly short order—but it didn’t.
The reason, Gearbox boss Randy Pitchford recently explained on Twitter, is simple: Borderlands 4. “I wish we could’ve managed some big campaign DLC, but no way to do that *and* put the focus on Borderlands 4 that we needed to,” he tweeted. “I’m sorry I couldn’t talk about it at the time, but the world is the world.”
Pitchford also denied the suggestion that Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands was a failure, saying it was “far from a flop.”
The timeline fits: Pitchford was hinting at a new Borderlands game way back in May 2021, nearly a year before Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands rolled out, and while it was presumably early days at that point, Gearbox’s attention was clearly already shifting to Borderlands 4.
Also probably relevant is the fact that Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands was not a full-fat game unto itself: Australian editor Jody Macgregor described it as “bigger than an expansion, smaller than a standalone Borderlands game” in his 70% review.
None of which is to say that Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands is done forever. This is videogames, after all, where sequels reign supreme, and Pitchford has quite recently suggested that more is in store. In a July interview with GamesRadar, he said the success of Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands is “something we can build on,” and that “it’s reasonable for our fans to expect more there.” Just, y’know, not until sometime after Borderlands 4. Which, for the record, is currently slated to happen sometime in 2025.