Speculation has run wild since the release of Batman: Arkham City. From ideas that the next installment would be titled "Arkham World" (encouraged by Rocksteady themselves), to rumours the team would actually be leaving Batman behind to work on a Justice League game in the build up to a Justice League movie, no one is sure of Rocksteady's next move. And that includes the writer for the last two Batman outings, Paul Dini.

Eurogamer reports that after a Tweet or two, followed by a bit of sleuthing, Dini himself has essentially confirmed that there's no new Batman in the works, mostly because he's not involved in whatever Rocksteady's next project will be.

"The last talk I had with Warner Interactive about future games was while I was doing promotion for Arkham City last September," the Batman scribe posted on his LiveJournal. "Naturally as there was such a rush of interest about Arkham City, everyone was asking me about a third game, and frankly, I had been wondering about that myself.

"When I asked about the possibility of working on a third game I was told that as Rocksteady had just finished wrapping the second one, it would be a while before everyone was ready to sit down and discuss future plans. That said, it was intimated that for future games, Warner and Rocksteady might not be looking as much to freelance writers, the message being, that if had something else interesting coming my way, I might want to take it."

Taking other projects on is exactly what Dini did, and he explained that doing so has left him "unavailable to take on anything new until 2013". It's not completely splitsville though, and Dini himself regarded the possibility of working with Rocksteady again as something that "would be cool", but either way, it's looking less and less likely we'll see a full return of the Caped Crusader at the hands of Rocksteady. At least for the foreseeable future.