Although development for Dead Space 2 may not, well, be dead it sounds as if the team behind it is now working on other projects. The he-said, they-said, someone else-said, game regarding the project status for the remake sequel doesn’t appear to be ending any time soon. Earlier this week Giant Bomb host Jeff Grubb claimed the game had been cancelled due to lackluster sales. This was a little bit of a surprise given the mostly positive response from the gaming community for the release of the 2023 Dead Space Remake which earned the #1 spot on Metacritic’s Best PlayStation 5 Game of 2023 and #2 for Best PC Game of 2023.
Not long after Grubb’s story went public EA responded by saying that there was “No Validity” to his claims. Now another journalist has thrown their hat into the ring that seems to support Jeff’s reporting. Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier has reported the game is officially on hold.
Per Bloomberg:
“After finishing the Dead Space remake, which was released in January 2023, a small team at the Electronic Arts subsidiary Motive spent a few months conceiving ideas for a new entry in the series, said the people. But those plans were never given a greenlight and fizzled before they could get very far. Since last summer, that team has instead been exploring other ideas while the bulk of the developers who worked on Dead Space moved to different projects.”
Schreier added that his sources also confirmed the project was put on hold due to not meeting sales expectations, which supports Grubb’s claims. What those sales expectations were remains to be seen but it is known that EA Motive is moving forward with its Iron Man game along with a new entry Battlefield franchise. In light of potentially limited resources for developing these two games, it is plausible that EA Motive had to make a tough choice on where to allocate its team. Meanwhile, while Dead Space 2 may not be canceled it wouldn’t be the worst idea for the studio to at least give an actual update on the project to let fans know what to expect, and perhaps when.