An Electronic Arts “insider” says the publisher plans to broaden the Dead Space franchise to include an FPS, a flight sim and something in the vein of Uncharted.
Dead Space is a reasonably popular and reasonably successful franchise that covers a lot of ground for EA. The original Dead Space eventually broke a couple million unit sales, while Dead Space 2 managed to almost hit that mark in its first week of release; the Extraction spin-off for the Wii and PlayStation 3 did reasonably well for itself, while the downloadable Ignition did not. There have also been animated movies, comic books and a novel.
But EA is apparently looking to expand the series even further, according to an inside source who told Kotaku that next up on the Dead Space menu is a first-person shooter. It’s a bit of an odd choice, since despite its billing as a survival horror game Dead Space is pretty much a straight-up shooter series already, but that’s not where it ends. The company also reportedly wants to make a Dead Space “flight game” and something along the lines of Uncharted.
The eternal optimist in me envisions the flight game as a modern-day Freespace, although the point of slapping the Dead Space name on it eludes me. Not sure about the Uncharted thing, though; why not just shift Dead Space 3 into that adventurous realm, rather than sinking the time and money into a parallel game?
Speaking of Dead Space 3, it’s still alive and kicking and will feature co-op gameplay on an ice planet, as has already been rumored. The insider claimed that the expansion of the franchise followed a management shuffle at EA that almost led to the cancellation of Dead Space 3 because of underperforming sales, yet for some unexplained reason the decision to kill it became a double-down instead.
All of this is strictly rumor so take it for what it’s worth, which at this point isn’t much. EA has yet to comment on the report.
