There's been a whole lot of chaos surrounding the Dead Space franchise over the past few hours, and it relates to a rumour that began over at Giant Bomb's "Game Mess Mornings" podcast where it was suggested that plans for a Dead Space 2 remake had been cancelled by EA due to lacklustre sales for the 2023 remake of the original game.
This, surprisingly, prompted a reply from EA, which told IGN that although the company usually doesn't respond to rumours, they wanted to point out that there is "no validity to this story". Here's the exact quote:
"We don't normally comment on rumors but there is no validity to this story."
The host of the Giant Bomb show, Jeff Grubb, then doubled-down on his claim in a follow-up tweet:
So, what's going on here? Well, Bloomberg's Jason Schreier offered a bit more context yesterday by reporting that EA did indeed shelve plans for a new Dead Space game due to lacklustre sales, and there were some ideas for a new entry at one point. However, those didn't get very far, and were pretty much abandoned as of last summer.
Since then, the team has apparently been exploring other ideas, and the bulk of developers from the Dead Space remake have since moved on to other projects - two of the directors are working on the next Battlefield, for example.
We may not have all the specifics here, but it sounds pretty likely that EA isn't planning on giving us a new Dead Space anytime soon, which is a real shame. The remake was one of the highest-rated games of 2023 with an average of 89 on Metacritic, but unfortunately, great scores don't always translate into great sales figures.
At least it's playable with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate - an excellent addition to the service that's well worth your time!