A new rumor claims that EA scrapped plans for a Dead Space 2 remake due to “lackluster sales” from the first one, which was released in January of last year.
A screenshot from Dead Space (2023), Motive
This rumor comes in the wake of Motive, the developer behind the Dead Space remake, announcing on April 9th that it would be working with Criterion, DICE, and Ripple Effect on Battlefield.
Motive’s Studios General Manager Patrick Klaus stated in a blog post, “a group of developers from Motive are joining the talented teams at Criterion, DICE and Ripple Effect to continue unlocking the full potential of Battlefield.”
He added, “The directors who delivered our Dead Space remake in 2023, Philippe Ducharme (Executive Producer) and Roman Campos-Oriola (Creative Director), will build a team at Motive to work alongside the Battlefield studios around the world creating what’s next for Battlefield– a universe across both multiplayer and single-player experiences.”
A screenshot from Dead Space (2023), Motive
Klaus also provided an update on the company’s previously announced Iron Man game stating, “In parallel, development continues to move forward on our Iron Man project, led by Olivier Proulx (Executive Producer) and Ian Frazier (Creative Director). The team made excellent progress this year, hitting a major internal milestone and laying a robust foundation for the journey ahead.”
He added, “Iron Man is an important priority for Motive, and I’m very proud of the work we’ve accomplished so far.”
A screenshot from Dead Space (2023), Motive
Following this report, Jeff Grub at Giant Bomb detailed on a recent livestream that Motive was developing a Dead Space 2 remake, but it has since been scrapped.
He explained, “So they were working on it. They were working on Dead Space 2, and they are no longer working on it. It is on the shelf because the first game had lackluster sales is how it was phrased to me.”
“So if you were looking forward to a Dead Space 2, it’s bad news. It’s straight up is just bad news,” he continued. “Does this mean it never happens? I don’t know if that’s the case. But as it stands right now they were working on it. It was in the concepting phase, I believe. It was definitely in pre-production. And now that work has been put on the shelf and they are done with it and this studio is now making Iron Man and Battlefield.”
Grubb later added, “Maybe it sold enough to justify what they did with the first one, but they were expecting big enough sales to be like, ‘Alright and this will power us through remaking a bunch of Dead Space games and making a bunch of new Dead Space games.’ And maybe the numbers just weren’t there.”
It’s unclear how well the game did sales wise. However, the game was the second most sold game in January 2023 when it released at least according to NPD’s sales charts. The only game that beat it was Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.
Games Industry reported the remake was the most sold game in the United Kingdom when it launched, but it “sold less than half of what The Callisto Protocol managed in its first week back in December.” However, as Games Industry’s Christopher Dring notes Callisto Protocol was released in December and was available on more platforms. It also had a lower average price.
Looking at Steam Charts, the game did have an all-time peak concurrent number of players of 30,925 in the first week of release. However, it quickly dropped off. A little over a year since the game released and the 24-hour peak concurrent sits at 572 players.
Dead Space charts via SteamDB
Motive’s Dead Space remake was trashed by YouTuber Synthetic Man for being politically charged. While he praised some of the improvements to the gameplay and the maps, he also said, “I really think they f***ed up a lot of the horror elements here. Part of that was the necromorph designs look less human, which really takes away that uncanny valley factor. A lot of the animations look jank and cheap. I mean when a game from 2008 has more fluid animation than a modern AAA release, you know something’s f***ed up.”
He also criticized the game’s sound effects. As for the game’s charged agenda, he said, “One, the Hellion crew has been diversified. Notably, one now being a black woman. Now, ultimately, it doesn’t really matter considering she dies in the first 30 minutes, but for some reason the devs thought that was a good change.”
“The most notable one, the one you’ve likely seen is the all gender bathroom. Not unisex bathroom, the all gender bathroom” he added. “Of course, I can’t forget the obvious one that Nicole looks 50 now, probably twice the age she was intended to be in the original. And yes, I know they modeled her after the voice actress much like how Isaac Clark now looks like Gunner Wright, who vaguely looks like Adam Sandler, but that’s just laziness. I hate this trend of modeling video game characters after the actor because they just want to take the cheap route with this motion capture technology. This is not what these characters are supposed to look like. This is just distracting.”
What do you make of this rumor that a Dead Space 2 remake has been scrapped by EA and Motive?
