While the third entry in Visceral Games’ horror series failed to reach company targets, Frank Gibeau, EA Labels president, has claimed that the publisher “still has faith” in the Dead Space franchise. In an interview with CVG, Gibeau addressed the unfavourable sales figures of Dead Space 3 while also discussing the longevity of the franchise as a whole.
Here’s a snippet of the interview:
“I’m not announcing anything right now, but I will say we had a great trilogy of games and we still have faith in that franchise. Dead Space is something that we’re very proud of,” he added. “We are not making any public announcements on what we’re doing with the next Dead space, but we definitely have a great set of IPs to pull out of the vault.”
One thing’s for sure: having opted to craft a new, as yet untitled Star Wars game, the developing team at Visceral Games aren’t currently working on a Dead Space title. Subsequently, given that the American-based studio have been attached to the franchise since its inception in 2008, the question now is, will the series secure a new developer in the future? This is something Gibeau touched on by stating that EA currently has a “certain amount of teams,” and that it’s all about allocating resources.
“The worst thing you can do as a company is try too many things at once,” he said.
It was around this time last year when the president of EA Labels stated that Dead Space 3 would need to hit 5 million sales in order to be considered a success. However, the latest tale of Isaac Clark’s interstellar adventure garnered lower than expected retail sales – in fact, it sold 605,000 units during its launch month in February – which was deemed as disappointing for a multi-platform release.
Alas, for Dead Space 3, the sales revenue simply wasn’t enough to cover the game’s considerable production value. In saying that, does this mean that any further iteration of the series will be forced to adopt a minimalistic horror approach a la the original Dead Space? Give us your opinion on the status of Visceral Games’ franchise in the comments below.
