• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Rumour: Dead Space 4 Cancelled Following Poor DS3 Sales [EA: "Patently False"]

I understand why people want mirror's edge 2, but I don't see why EA would make that. Dice is on a tight schedule making battlefield and the road scenery for the next need for speed game. Much too busy to make another catastrobomb. Sorry.

Some of us like videogames more than sales numbers and rooting for our favorite corporation.
 

Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
Derrick01 said:
A victory for gamers with how the series was going.

How can it be a Victory? Not everyone hates the game, in fact there are plenty of posters who liked it a lot, it wasn't even a critical failure. Stop with the idiotic hyperbole; just because it offers more fodder for the "EA Sucks" bandwagon doesn't justify any sort of triumphalism.

Just like the movies, in games successes are good for everyone, and conversely failures are bad. I don't see any other publishers queuing-up to make high quality survival horror titles, and the failure of DS3 especially with everything EA did to try and help it in the marketplace is sure as shit going to encourage them to give the genre a wide berth.
 

Salz01

Member
Loved 2, can't stand 3. I thought they might have had a chance with 4 on next gen, but it seems they are not up to the task. Poor Isaac.
 

Rainy Dog

Member
How long as DS3 been out? Only seems like it was released a few weeks ago for me.

Absolutely amazed a game can be declared a sales failure and a franchise be killed on the spot based on a few weeks worth of sales data.

What an absolute farce this has become. I simply can't see how production and investment for these big budget games (I refuse to use the term 'AAA') can continue down this path, it's just unsustainable.
 

Arukado

Member
Not surpring, and i did my part by not buying it.

DS1 is in my top 5 games of the generation, but i was disappointed by DS2 so i had no interest in DS3 in the first place. And reading about the microtransactions/mainstream aim of the game didn't help either.
 

Derrick01

Banned
How can it be a Victory? Not everyone hates the game, in fact there are plenty of posters who liked it a lot, it wasn't even a critical failure. Stop with the idiotic hyperbole; just because it offers more fodder for the "EA Sucks" bandwagon doesn't justify any sort of triumphalism.

Just like the movies, in games successes are good for everyone, and conversely failures are bad. I don't see any other publishers queuing-up to make high quality survival horror titles, and the failure of DS3 especially with everything EA did to try and help it in the marketplace is sure as shit going to encourage them to give the genre a wide berth.

I didn't see DS3 attempting survival horror either. Most horror fans should know by now that if you want actual horror games you're going to have to stick to PC only because nowadays if it's a AAA console game it's going to be a shooter or action game with spooky monsters.

Me personally I'm looking forward to that Unreal Engine 4 horror game coming out on PC sometime this year.
 

Replicant

Member
it was always going to happen. You gotta give EA props for making a third. It should have died at DS1 but they made 2 sequels.

DeadSpace just didn't light the world on fire.

No hate here.




nope

Nope. What franchise EA still has now? They ruined most of their non-sport titles. Dead Space 2 performed decently but instead of making the game smaller in scope, They ballooned up the budget and we got highly padded game that is expected to perform 5 Million copies. I think anyone who's played the game agree that the game is way too long for its own good. They should have made it shorter and have realistic expectations regarding sales.
 
How long as DS3 been out? Only seems like it was released a few weeks ago for me.

Absolutely amazed a game can be declared a sales failure and a franchise be killed on the spot based on a few weeks worth of sales data.

3 weeks is really all you need to project out a 2 year sales curve with a fairly tight range of error, especially when you have a perfect benchmark in DS2.
 

Killer

Banned
I will celebrate that failure even more. I wanted to buy a new, big SimCity game. I had money ready and all they had to do was make a new game....and they EA'd it. Always online DRM disguised as "it's a multiplayer/social game (with loads of F2P microtransactions!)", nevermind that no one wanted a social SimCity game to begin with. So here's me being social and telling them to fuck off once again.

I'm on the same boat.

Simcity having Diablo 3 error37 equivalent is madness.
 

Majanew

Banned
I hope the industry doesn't call DS3 a survival horror game, and the result is no more devs/pubs wanting to touch the survival horror genre. Oh how I miss you so, survival horror. How I miss you so.
 

Whompa

Member
"...to make it feel more like Bioware's Mass Effect"

why cant we have Dead Space as a horror game and Mass Effect as an RPG?

I'm not saying Mass Effect's latest incarnations are RPGs either. They are definitely light on the RPG elements.

Basically what I'm implying is that EA sucks and they are making everything that started off original into a third person shooter.
 
That's what happens when you forsake your true fans/buyers to focus on those who are not interested.

Dead Space doesn’t have an official forum, and even if it did, it is not like EA will listen to the BUYERS, people wanted Dead Space to become more Survival Horror rather than an all out Action Horror like Resident Evil did, it makes sense, but EA isn’t listening to words, they only listen to sales.

I didn’t buy DS3 yet -but will buy it later on in July or something-, DS3 could have been handled better, why couldn’t Visceral go for something more like Resident Evil 2 ?!, 2 SP campaigns that come together to make one hell of a game ?!, people loved RE2 back in the day, but no EA wanted Online to be in, so put Co-Op in, even if Co-Op isn’t forced, it could have been made something different, after all Co-Op =/= Survival Horror, and people are searching for Survival Horror.


EA argued they wanted to appeal to the gamers who can’t handle Horror, WTF ?!, I thought you were supposed to make it even more horrific, old horror fans are already having a hard time getting scared from something, no need to dump it down even more, Beside I thought EA said that microtansactions sells alot and that all its games will have microtransactions from now on, how is that smart ?!.



Don’t get me wrong, I love Visceral Games, I liked Dante’s Inferno and waiting for the sequel Dante’s Purgatory, I used to like Dead Space alot, but Dead Space 3 wasn’t really appealing, and I am afraid Army of Two The Devil’s Cartel will fail miserably, cause again EA is trying to focus on the whole Mindless Action fans.



Publishers should try and listen to their fans from now on, otherwise they will fail ---eyes on Ubisoft.
 

subversus

I've done nothing with my life except eat and fap
How can it be a Victory? Not everyone hates the game, in fact there are plenty of posters who liked it a lot, it wasn't even a critical failure. Stop with the idiotic hyperbole; just because it offers more fodder for the "EA Sucks" bandwagon doesn't justify any sort of triumphalism.

Just like the movies, in games successes are good for everyone, and conversely failures are bad. I don't see any other publishers queuing-up to make high quality survival horror titles, and the failure of DS3 especially with everything EA did to try and help it in the marketplace is sure as shit going to encourage them to give the genre a wide berth.

EA didn't help it one bit with DS3. Co-op horror loses its point. And horror is a niche genre. They should have cancelled DS1 if they had a lick of business sense. I'm glad they didn't though.
 
They currently have a third Army of Two in development. Who the hell was even asking for that? I'm being serious. I've never seen someone say "I really want another Army of Two game!". Where was that request coming from? At least with ME there's clearly a clamor for a sequel. And it's not like that's a game that would take some huge budget. Well, assuming that they don't turn it into something that it isn't supposed to be.

It truly is mind-boggling. Three Army of Twos, three Skate games, and only one Mirror's Edge. There really is something deeply wrong with this industry.
 

Margalis

Banned
Instead of making the best Dead Space style game they decided to make the tenth-best generic co-op dude-bro QTE game.

This is a decision more and more publishers are making and more and more publishers will be punished for.

If you have a niche with a loyal audience and are the best at delivering to that audience you can make reliable sales with modest investment. People care if you are the best horror shooter, or the best Halo-style shooter, or the best dance game. Nobody cares if you are a merely competent game in a completely saturated genre.

Almost every publisher these days has adopted the strategy of producing a small number of blockbuster titles, most of which directly compete with each other because they are all basically the same game. It's not a strategy that can work long-term.

How can it be a Victory?

Because people are told "vote with your wallets." People don't want micro-transaction notices completely breaking immersion. It makes doubly no sense in a game like Dead Space, which has a diegetic UI to maintain immersion as much as possible. People don't want the horror ratcheted down in favor of co-op, they don't want a weaker single-player experience, they don't want to be fighting humanoid enemies who shoot back at them.
 

Ahasverus

Member
Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.


I would love for EA to become app/socal/mobile only, one less cancer for the industry.
 

Sid

Member
I will celebrate that failure even more. I wanted to buy a new, big SimCity game. I had money ready and all they had to do was make a new game....and they EA'd it. Always online DRM disguised as "it's a multiplayer/social game (with loads of F2P microtransactions!)", nevermind that no one wanted a social SimCity game to begin with. So here's me being social and telling them to fuck off once again.
Well said except I won't be celebrating their failure.
 

Xater

Member
I'm part of the problem. No interest in DS3, when I loved 1 and 2. I'm just tired of playing the same shit over and over. I didn't bother looking at crysis 3, tomb raider...I don't even care about bioshock or gears judgment.

I'll probably only buy stick of truth and GTA before next gen hits.

I feel exactly the same way and we are probably not alone. I am still interested in Bioshock but yeah stuff like Tomb Raide is just so unappealing.
 
Sadly this happens when games are designed for shareholders, not for gamers. Hopefully all those losing their jobs land on their feet.
 
I just found these games stressful to play, they didn't build fear and dread through subtlety, like the best horror films, but instead they were more like modern horror films that rely on jump scares, which is the laziest form of horror. One I find annoying.

Sad for the fans of the series though, there's much worse series out there that trundle on.
 

BeauRoger

Unconfirmed Member
While EA has commited its fair share of sins (as evident by that post) canning DS4 isnt one of them. It didnt sell enough, the consumers have spoken. I seriously doubt that the lackluster sales were due to the DLC issues.
 

Dan

No longer boycotting the Wolfenstein franchise
If microtransactions had never been talked about, I'm pretty sure the vast majority of players would have never even noticed they were part of the game.
 
So they took a video game that started with a developer's creativity which earned a good fanbase based on the developers unique gameplay and tried to transform that video game into a product that checked off the boxes of a clueless exec. removing the devs freedom in order to reach some silly pie in the sky sales figure. Are they really surprised they failed?

There seem to be very few publishers that actually understand gamers and the VG market.
 
It is almost as though taking all of the sense of isolation, tension, and horror elements that were in the original Dead Space, (and to a lesser extent, Dead Space 2) and removing them in order to turn Dead Space 3 into a generic action game, wasn't such a good idea.
 

Derrick01

Banned
Well said except I won't be celebrating their failure.

Well potential firings and series closing down is not something I celebrate, but if we want these games with bad decisions that most of us complain are killing the creativity in this industry to end then the end result of that is probably going to be those two things.

That's unfortunately the cost of things changing for the better in the long run. If DS3 sold 5 million they would only make the next one worse to hope it can do 7 million.
 

Rainy Dog

Member
3 weeks is really all you need to project out a 2 year sales curve with a fairly tight range of error, especially when you have a perfect benchmark in DS2.

Possibly true, but that's the issue.

I just don't see how the industry can sustain the spiraling budgets of these games with it's current front loaded or bust approach.
 
If microtransactions had never been talked about, I'm pretty sure the vast majority of players would have never even noticed they were part of the game.

If the best thing you can say about something is that 'It didn't fuck things up this time', perhaps it's still worth calling it out.
 

Evolved1

make sure the pudding isn't too soggy but that just ruins everything
It is almost as though taking all of the sense of isolation, tension, and horror elements that were in the original Dead Space, (and to a lesser extent, Dead Space 2) and removing them in order to turn Dead Space 3 into a generic action game, wasn't such a good idea.

I don't think DS ever sold that well... even when it was just RE4 in space.

btw... look at Tomb Raider and all the gaffers high on that game. It's gross, but it apparently works for pubs/devs to follow the AAA dudebro blueprint.
 

Majanew

Banned
Ooh you jsut know they are gonna blame us for this.

I blame GameStop and used games lol


Now I'm worried what will happen when the next Need For Speed/Burnout under preforms :/

Burnout will hopefully die if it's anything like Paradise. *shudders* UGH. Burnout is contained tracks, not open world. Crazy, over-the-top crashes, not weak aiming-for-more-realism crashes. Burnout Paradise never existed!
 
While EA has commited its fair share of sins (as evident by that post) canning DS4 isnt one of them. It didnt sell enough, the consumers have spoken. I seriously doubt that the lackluster sales were due to the DLC issues.

But the people -or at least I- spoke that we don't want Co-Op -forced or not- we don't want action as the focus, we don't want microtransactions.


EA could have gotten 3Millions sales -maybe more- easy if they made Dead Space 3 a major focus on Survival Horror, 2 SP campaigns like Resident Evil 2, or maybe something like Resident Evil Zero.
 
I voted with my dollars and the first game was the only good one.

new IP is what we need not more cash in sequels that try to entice the casuals

good riddance to mediocrity
 

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
So if Montreal was slated to make Dead Space 4 while Redwood Shores made a new IP, what was the point of Army of Two 3?

Were they trying to build a team while losing less money?
 
Top Bottom