Dead Space is a big deal for Electronic Arts — as if you couldn’t tell by the DLC, comics, novels, movies and toys that have accompanied the series. The franchise’s medium-spanning coverage isn’t enough for the publisher, however, as EA has plans to see it become as prevalent in our minds as Resident Evil.
“The Resident Evil series was awesome, the early versions were phenomenal,” said EA’s Frank Gibeau. “[Capcom] did a good job of growing the franchise to a very large market. I think we still have some areas to grow with Dead Space in terms of trying to reach a broader audience without losing the quality and that survival-horror mechanic. That’s how we’re going to think about it as we think about Dead Space 3 and what we do next with the IP.
“Overall, we want to try and grow the business in the action category. EA doesn’t really have a very strong stake there; survival-horror kind of lives in that genre.Third-person action is something that we think we can build and our Visceral Games team is really working hard at crafting some new IPs as well as building out ones that have succeeded. Horror movies are great films; it’s a genre that’s been around for decades. We think the same holds true for interactive.”
I have a feeling that Dead Space is destined to be a classic. There’s something about the IP that gets under your skin — once you “click” with Dead Space, you’re addictive to everything about it. This is coming from a guy who is on his fourth play of Dead Space 2 and has an LED-light-up Isaac Clarke sitting in his Amazon shopping cart … I might have a problem.