Despite that fact that the series’ return in last year’s excellent Dead Space remake was hugely celebrated and really drove home what EA’s Motive Studio is capable of, new reports this week suggest that the Dead Space franchise is destined to lay dormant once again.
These claims seem to have first caught with a comment from Giant Bomb podcast’s Jeff Grubb, who brought up the lack of any acknowledgement of a new Dead Space game in the recent announcement that Motive would be working on the future of Battlefield as well as the upcoming Iron Man game. “They were working on it,” Grubb suggests. “They were working on Dead Space 2, and they are no longer working on it. It is on the shelf because the first game had lacklustre sales, is how it was phrased to me.”
Not long after these comments got a bit of traction, EA issued a statement to IGN in a rare direct response to these claims and said “We don’t normally comment on rumors but there is no validity to this story,” with IGN adding that it understands EA Motive never considered a Dead Space 2 remake – which doesn’t really change the outcome that the series is likely going dark again.
Adding to these stories is Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier who shared his own report following Grubb’s and EA’s comments, saying via sources familiar with the situation that “hopes for a new Dead Space game at EA were derailed after sales of the remake missed the company’s expectations.” Schreier claims that Motive spent a few months conceiving ideas for a new entry in the series, but “plans were never given a greenlight and fizzled before they could get very far.”
We gave Dead Space a huge 9/10 in our review last year, saying “EA Motive could have taken a path of least resistance in delivering a Dead Space remake, though I’m thankful for everything they’ve poured into what is a tremendous reimagining of one of gaming’s truly iconic horror games. It’s gorier than ever, the story is made whole, encompassing lore elements once merely pieced together by its fan base, and feels like a genuinely fresh twist on the original.”
