A report has claimed there were plans for an entirely new Dead Space game floating around Motive Studio, but publisher EA never gave the greenlight.
On April 10, Giant Bomb’s Jeff Grubb said a Dead Space 2 remake had been shelved, but EA swiftly denied this, saying there was “no validity” to Grubb’s claims. A follow-up report by Bloomberg, however, says there was at least interest in continuing the series at Motive, which was responsible for remaking the original Dead Space.
In fact, according to Bloomberg’s sources, rather than remake Dead Space 2, a small team within Motive spent a few months brainstorming ideas for an entirely new entry in the series. Whether this would’ve been a proper Dead Space 4 or something else isn’t known, but Motive’s plans didn’t get very far. This is because the Dead Space remake, which launched in January 2023, failed to meet EA’s sales expectations; something Grubb also claimed to be the case. As a result, EA decided to shelve the whole series that spring.
What makes this extra depressing is that early sales figures for the remake painted a positive picture. According to data from the NPD (via VentureBeat), Dead Space was among the best-selling games in the U.S. that January, only being outsold by the 2022 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. In the U.K., Dead Space was at the top of the physical sales charts, though GamesIndustry.biz noted it had sold less than half of what The Callisto Protocol (a similar horror game from Dead Space‘s original creator Glen Schofield) managed in its first week.
Regardless, this marks the second time EA has put Dead Space on ice, having done it once before when 2013’s Dead Space 3 also missed the company’s sales expectations. The rave reviews for the remake from critics and fans suggested the series had a new future, but it seems Isaac Clarke’s adventures won’t be continuing any time soon. After all, Motive is currently busy with its Iron Man game, and it now has a separate team assisting with the Battlefield series.
