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EA has ceased development on Dead Space 4 and effectively axed the series following lower than anticipated sales of Dead Space 3, VideoGamer.com has learned.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a source familiar with the unannounced project told VideoGamer.com that Dead Space 4 had been in pre-production at Visceral Games, with a small team at Visceral Montreal allegedly tasked with developing prototypes and mock-ups for the title, and collaborating on ideas for the game's narrative.

However, the project was cancelled after Dead Space 3 failed to meet its sales targets, our source claims, telling us that EA executives visited Visceral Montreal last month to inform staff that the project had been terminated and announce details of the company's restructuring.

Visceral Montreal is rumoured to have closed following the restructuring.

Psyche911 wrote:Not only is there a queue for single player, but it waits 30 minutes between connection attempts.

MKJ wrote:also, http://kotaku.com/5988639/rumors-of-dea ... ays-studio

An EA representative has passed along the company's official statement on the layoffs.

Today EA internally announced some adjustments to select development teams to align staff and skills against priority growth areas, including new technologies and mobile. Many employees are being retrained for new positions; however a small number will be released. These are great, talented people and we wish them well. EA is growing globally, and we expect our headcount to increase this year.

EA also stressed that Visceral Redwood Shores, the flagship studio of Visceral Games and developer of Dead Space, has not been impacted by the layoffs, which has been a source of confusion on Twitter. In regards to Visceral Montreal, the representative stated the following: "EA Montreal is a key development studio where our long-term plan is to sharpen our teams' focus on consoles and mobile games."

GONNAFISTYA wrote:Dead Space 3 has sold less than 800,000 copies...which I'm pretty sure didn't surprise anyone, including EA. If EA hadn't figured out that Deep Space 3 would potentially flop just by the audience's reaction at E3 last year, then they're dumber than I imagined.

But I don't think they're dumb. I think they know every evil thing they do, which is why they suck so hard.

GONNAFISTYA wrote:This franchise brought something sweet and somewhat original to gaming and it's sad to watch it fall victim to the vapid pursuit of profit at the cost of ruining an IP and killing a studio and loads of jobs...which has happened in the last decade more times than I wish to remember.

Captain Mazda wrote:[..]That's what multiplayer/co-op modes have become.

Look at all the single player franchises that are suddenly trying to grab a piece of the online gaming pie.

Psyche911 wrote:In other news of EA's suckage, word is the Sim City reboot can't be accessed on launch. Not only is there a queue for single player, but it waits 30 minutes between connection attempts.

Captain Mazda wrote:

GONNAFISTYA wrote:This franchise brought something sweet and somewhat original to gaming and it's sad to watch it fall victim to the vapid pursuit of profit at the cost of ruining an IP and killing a studio and loads of jobs...which has happened in the last decade more times than I wish to remember.

This is pretty much EA's contribution to gaming for almost a decade now. Find a studio with solid IP and a loyal fanbase, squeeze every penny out of it with generic sequels and turn the fans against it (Bioware anyone?), move on after the studio is in shambles and its staff have been fired.

EA is like a fucking parasite jumping host to host.

Update 3: To further clarify, EA sent us an additional statement. "These rumours are patently false. While we have not released sales data for Dead Space 3, we are proud of the game and it continues to be an important IP to EA. Appreciate your help bringing down this baseless rumour."

So where does the truth lie in this somewhat confusing back and forth? At this point, we have to believe EA's stringent denials, if for no other reason than the fact that responses of any kind to unsourced rumors like this are so incredibly rare. If there was even a chance that this was true, EA would have likely played it safe and stuck with the standard "no comment." Instead, the company ultimately risked its credibility by denying it.

So the question turns to who to blame for the whole fiasco. Was VideoGamer.com wrong to run its report based on such flimsy information? Did EA make its own bed by failing to get in front of the story when the site gave it the opportunity? Do the many sites that parroted the report without further checks hold any blame?....

...Graft acknowledged that it seems like one arm of EA's PR monolith didn't know what the other was doing in crafting the slow and confusing response to the story. But he noted that's no excuse for going with what seems like a wholly inaccurate report. For a story of this magnitude, Graft believes VideoGamer.com shouldn't have just relied on the say-so of one source that seems to have questionable ties to EA.