Dead Space 4 supposedly canceled. But it isn't.

http://www.xbox360achievements.org/news/news-14283-Report--EA-Cancels-Dead-Space-4--Future-of-Series-in-Doubt.html

Report: EA Cancels Dead Space 4, Future of Series in DoubtWritten Tuesday, March 05, 2013 By Lee BradleyView author's profile

Despite being in the early stages of development, Dead Space 4 has been cancelled following the disappointing sales of Dead Space 3. That’s according to a report published this morning, citing an anonymous source close to the unannounced project. Should it be true the revelation casts doubt over the future of the once-promising action horror series. The source claims that Dead Space 4 was in production at developer Visceral Games, with a small team working on prototypes and potential narratives for the game. However, following the failure of Dead Space 3 to live up to EA’s expectations, the publisher visited the studio last month to inform the team that work should stop. In addition to this the source also provided some insight into the development of Dead Space 3 and none of it reflects well on EA. Apparently the game endured several budget cuts and at one point was almost cancelled. What’s more the publisher is said to have ordered Visceral to change the ammo system in the game to allow for a microtransaction implementation. Dead Space 3’s microtransactions would go on to cause quite a stir, generating ill-will for the title before it was even released. The source claims that Dead Space 3 was to feature a weapon-specific ammo system, but it made a potential microtransaction system cumbersome, so generic ammo was introduced instead. During development and post-release much of the discussion around Dead Space 3 centered on the game’s continuing shift towards all-out action and away from the series’ creepy horror. According to the source this was a publisher-led decision, as EA wanted the game to appeal to as wide an audience as possible. The studio was reportedly told to make Dead Space 3 feel more like Mass Effect. Unfortunately for both EA and Visceral, Dead Space 3’s shift wasn’t enough to secure the future of the series. Launched last month first week sales were down 26.6 per cent on those of Dead Space 2. It has slid pretty quickly down the UK charts too, suggesting that sales are dropping pretty sharply. EA has yet to comment.

Well, this is depressing.

EA forces developers to include things like microtransactions and to make their games more 'mainstream'. People don't buy that game because it's just like every other game. EA shuts studio.

"It's the ciiiiiiiiiiiiircle of EA"

Jesus. If all of this is true, I wonder if this could be the end of Visceral...

Completely unsurprising. Next up, Bioware.

EA is the graveyard of franchises.

It's funny because EA had reversed some of the ill-will towards it at the beginning of the current generation when it released titles like Skate and Dead Space. It's image is sliding back where it belongs ...

Karmic justice if this happens to Bioware next. They've been lumbering along wanting to die for about 4 games now. The fact they haven't been axed is surprising. Guess enough blind love for Mass Effect 3 has saved them.

*Game fails to meet expectation*

EA - Fire everyone in the studio associated with the project even though you fucked it up yourselves. Obviously the franchise isn't a cash cow.

CAPCOM - Continue releasing DLC Versus modes for the game and host numerous online events for said Versus modes.

I still wonder why people hate CAPCOM so much. People still butthurt like mad over Megaman?

So another series gets EAed to death. How many does that make?

It is, they are gone.

Another day, another 'EA being shitty' story.

They only closed the Army of Two Visceral, didn't they?

I wasn't personally fond of the way the franchise was heading anyways, but the games will always remain dear to me (at least 1 and 2).

Oh you are right! My bad :)

While that is a real bummer for the people working on it, I think this is a positive thing overall. Does the world really need another Dead Space game?

@kerned: If done correctly, going back to its sci-fi survival horror origins I'd love to play more Dead Space. I have no desire to play another Dead Space 3 experience though.

I think people are ignoring the term "supposedly"

With EA at the helm, probably not. If Dead Space 3 was any indication, then there was no hope of the series reaching the awesome heights of the first two.

WTF happened!? A few years ago EA was publishing some of the best games of this generation, now they are on an awful roll and their reputation is pretty shitty again. Same ol' EA...

Fuck EA.

Okay EA charge $70 for retail games. Really,I dare you to try it.

while i mourn the loss of jobs, the series didn't have a 4th one in it. and if EA did put it out, people wouldn't have liked it.

How many copies did they need it to sell? I mean, sure, it didn't do bf3 numbers, but it was never going to do that but i thought it sold pretty well considering when it came out and all the controversy surrounding it. Personally, I didn't buy specifically b/c of the microtransations and that it seemed to have lost the feel the first two games had.

@gogosox82: I'm pretty sure they had to push around 4 million. Which is what 1 & 2 made combined.

On a related side note, after starting DS3 i reinstalled Dead Space 2 again to get a save going for the extra suit. And Dead Space 2 actually looked better, faces, textures, sharpness of objects and great shadows. The budget cut is instantly apparent in Dead Space 3 when compared side by side with the second game on the PC.

@gogosox82:

According to this article it had to sale 5 million copies for EA to continue with the franchise

Seems like this is a no win situation in a way, people could either support Dead Space 3 and the direction it has taken, if it was successful the fourth instalment would have been probably pushed further in the direction that 3 went in or stop supporting it and hope for return to form with the fourth (though judging by this that was never really an option) It's a shame considering how promising the first two were.

Don't worry. Alex and the Bomb Crew will write up an apologist article on behalf of EA, telling us it's "just business". I suppose you've got to keep your friends and ex-employers (Alex was a former EA employee) happy, just in case you need to work for them again.

@fight_da_power: WAS*

@fourwude said:

I don't know what has led you to this assumption, the Bombcrew have usually reported when EA have been conducting pretty shitty business, regardless of who they are friends, they are mostly unbiased when it comes to that.

I'm on MoBull posting right now so can't quote.

Go and read Alex Navarros last article on microtransactions and you'll see what I mean.

Well this one was a surprise! Gods...I've had very mixed feelings about Dead Space 3 myself and haven't touched it yet due to it, but I still wasn't hoping this would happen. But like mentioned, it sure wasn't surprising either. Expected to sell five million copies, c'mon...

Try to appeal to everyone who's ever played a game in life and this is what you get - core fans of the series turned off and "mainstream gamers" barely looking up in recognition as they continue to play CoD, Gears, Halo. Microtransactions probably sealed DS3's and Visceral's fate. I hope the studio bounces back...they're too talented to languish in oblivion. Maybe another studio can take them and bring Dead Space back to its roots.

Well now I want to play 3 just to see how bad it is, enough to cancel a sequel and put the developer into an awful situation, those are the games I'm interested in

EDIT: Alright "bad" is the wrong word but really I want to play just to see the evolution of the series, not a huge fan of the series, enjoyed the first, haven't touched the 2nd one yet so I just want to see where the series ended up with 3.

No surprise. Dead Space 3 is very underwhelming.

What makes a studio get bought instead of being hired by publishers while staying independent? Ninja Theory somehow survived this long.

That's a real shame if it's true. Maybe Visceral Games could have distanced themselves from DS3, started over, and given us a reason to be excited about Dead Space again. The universe that they created has a lot of potential.

@nightriff: I don't think it was necessarily a bad game, just that it went from being a really interesting survival horror series that had a huge appeal to a certain group of people, into a completely generic co-op action game that appealed to absolutely nobody. It's exactly the same process Bioware has been going through for the past few years, going from making some of the most critically acclaimed RPG's ever released.. to making generic action games.

I think Bioware will get by on their legacy and brand names for a few more years, but their decline in quality after being bought by EA is ridiculously easy to follow (starting with the advertising for the original Dragon Age). It's only a matter of time before they're shut down or absorbed into other studios.

It is unfortunately the game ended on a mediocre note but in all honesty I don't know if I'd want to play another Dead Space game this soon. Maybe if someone picks this series up a few years down the road that will be the best thing to happen to it.

It's not a bad game, it's just OK and a large part of it has to do with the fact that it's a third game in a series.

The only way you can make a Dead Space game and make money is if you made it on a super low budget and sold just to straight horror fans... At that point, I wonder if people would even like it. If Dead Space looked like a grungy budget game, didn't have the same beautiful lighting, didn't have the polished and repolished combat... Would you even like it? If it didn't have the amazing space vistas and crazy monsters, if it was rather simple and sold for 20 dollars...

It feels like its too body horror to entice a wide market, and it's too reliant on its production values to be made on the cheap.

Also for anyone saying "it got EA'd to death" no, it's pretty much been unpopular from the start. Remember that Dead Space 1 was not a runaway success anywhere but critically. Remember that when EA put out Dead Space and Mirror's Edge, it had one of its worst years ever and had to fire like 600 fucking people. They kept making Dead Space and kept trying to make it a success and now they're probably going to have to fire more hundreds of people. Would you have been happier if they had just cut their losses then and fired Dino Ignacio 5 years ago?

Someone must have been eating paint chips to expect this game to sell 5 million copies. Hell, they would've been lucky if it sold more than DS2. I don't think the first two games broke 5 million so what on earth would make them think that DS3 would sell 5 million? Its this sort of thinking (everyone of our ip's needs to sell like bf, fifa, and madden) that killed this franchise. The first two games were interesting and different. DS3 looks bland and generic by comparison. And ea's probably going to fire a bunch of viseral devs b/c of this. I read an article on rps that said viseral was being "restructured". Its really a sad and unfortunate situation

@wintersnowblind said:

I wouldn't go back that far, ads for games have always been awful (I actually enjoyed DAO ads that I've seen) but the decline was obvious with DA2 and then confirmed with ME3.

That's a damn shame.

I don't think Dead Space 3 was a bad game but it feels like EA needs to rethink their plans for the series before doing another. And I get the feeling they will need to do the same for Dragon Age as well...

There definitely could have been some franchise fatigue going on here. Four games this gen (inc Extraction) when the first couple didn't sell a ton - then you have the loads of bad press surrounding the 3rd title, combined with unrealistic expectations from EA, and you get the news we have today.

That's a bit of a bummer. At this point I'd prefer they end the series rather than continue to push it into being an action game though, so I guess I'm alright with this.

I thought Dead Space 3 was a solid action game in a spooky setting. Overall I did like 2 more but the game is by no means bad. It's a shame this happened, they deserved better for making such a cool series. Hopefully it'll be back in a few years.

@gogosox82: Dead Space 2 sold around 2 million copies, which was twice the sales of the first one. I suppose EA was looking to double the sales again with a more "mainstream" experience and supplement the sales earnings with the microtransactions. I agree that the sales expectations were high, but EA also invested a lot in the production of the game. They were hoping for a certain return and it just didn't get there.

I hope EA keeps Visceral going, but the odds of Visceral being used to create a new IP and/or work on a game for next-generation consoles seems slim.

Franchise fatigue and because they barely done anything new of note. Practically no new enemies, same tired 'monster vents', and the environments were recycled ad-nauseum in parts. Sure, that sounds an awful lot like the original game, but that of course gets a pass because it was the original. DS3 was the second major sequel and yet, besides its crafting mechanic and coop, there was very little growth. Dead Space 2 on the other hand doubled just about everything while making the combat tighter and control better; even as someone who vastly prefers the original, I can't deny that DS2 still built upon certain areas of its foundation like a sequel is supposed to.

Plus DS3's coop was incredibly piecemeal and shallow at that; Carver was just another gun at your side for the most part and he rarely ever fitted into the proceedings very well -- minus the three cooperative only side-missions, which were undoubtedly the best thing about the entire game. The crafting mechanic is also really cool, but yet sorta useless since you're facing the same enemies who use the same tactics since their inception in 2008. Also, the dialogue and the way they handled its story was atrocious. And any and all combat against the human enemies was just straight-up bad even.

When taken as a whole, though, it's just so... average. Not bad by any means and I did have some fun with it here and there. But still, it's a massive nosedive from the quality of the first two there's no doubt about that.

With this, I just now realized how similar EA sounds to the Japanese word for "no". There's some type of beauty in that.

Unfortunate for the guys at Visceral, but on the other hand... putting a bullet in that series now doesn't seem like a terrible idea considering how much of a bummer Dead Space 3 is.

Of course, he can't possibly have his own opinion. The more logical choice is always...conspiracy! Seriously though, I think you've totally misinterpreted the article - it takes a pretty balanced look at both sides of the microtransactions issue - from EA's perspective and from the consumer's perspective.