Rumours are abound today that video games developer EA has canned any future Dead Space games after lacklustre sales of the latest instalment in the Space/Alien/Zombie shooter, Dead Space 3.
Dead Space 3 was released a few weeks back and whilst reviews and sales of the game have been decent (notably the reviews are very good, sales just OK), EA had previously stated that it would need to sell around 5 million units of Dead Space 3 for the developer to continue on with the series.
It appears that this lofty figure of sales just hasn’t been reached. The news is coming from a report on Videogamer.com, which says that the game hasn’t done as well as the developer had hoped and thus will be shelved for the next instalment of the franchise.
Dead Space 4 has not been formally announced but word is that the game’s developer Visceral Games and Visceral Montreal already had it in pre-production, but they have now been told to put the brakes on.
Dead Space 3 has sold 25 per cent fewer copies across formats than its predecessor, which means that it’s just not viable to continue on with the next instalment’s production at this time. However, this does not mean that Dead Space is, ahem, dead, but a new version is just not going to be out any time soon.
If you are a fan of the franchise you can help it along by popping out and buying Dead Space 3, but for the moment this may well be the end of the line for Isaac Clarke and his quite frankly terrifying ordeal.
This sort of news really does shine a light on the on-going economic crisis that is facing the gaming industry, as more games developers are struggling to make profitable titles and thus keep their businesses going. See THQ for a perfect example.
We hope Dead Space can live on someday as it’s one of the truly unique franchises available.