Hopes for a sequel to the Dead Space series are fading fast, as sales of the remake have fallen short of Electronic Arts' massive expectations. Chuck Beaver, former writer and producer of the series, makes it clear that the current AAA business model for classic horror titles is hardly sustainable anymore.
The 2023 Dead Space remake was celebrated by critics and fans alike, but the commercial results tell a different story. With an estimated two million units sold, the game falls far short of what EA considers necessary for long-term profitability.
Chuck Beaver explains in a recent FRVR PodcastA modern Dead Space would need to sell around seven to ten million copies to be considered a success. Previously, this threshold was around five million. Production costs have skyrocketed, while the target audience for hardcore horror seems to have a natural upper limit.
Horror as a risky investment
Horror games struggle with a structural problem: they are often purely single-player experiences without any live service elements. In an industry searching for the next "Fortnite" or sustainable revenue streams, Dead Space seems like a relic from a bygone era.
While franchises like Resident Evil regularly break millions of sales thanks to their enormous reach and the new Resident Evil Requiem, Dead Space has never been able to make the leap into the mass market. EA has already taken action. The EA Motive team has been reassigned from the Necromorph service and is now working on Battlefield 6 and an Iron Man project.
It's paradoxical. The genre is currently experiencing a renaissance thanks to the "Silent Hill 2 Remake," which recently surpassed five million units sold. But EA operates on a different level of expectation. In today's corporate environment, if a game doesn't have the potential to become a billion-dollar franchise, it's coldly abandoned. Quality alone no longer protects against demise. Dead Space is technically and atmospherically at its peak, but from a purely financial perspective, it's no longer attractive.
The chances of "Dead Space 4" are therefore virtually zero. The remake was a love letter to the fans, but apparently not the financial breakthrough the series needed. Anyone looking for dark horror will likely have to keep looking at Capcom or Konami.
Do you think Dead Space would have a chance with a smaller budget and less graphical bombast, or is the franchise unthinkable for you without triple-A glamour?
I read the headline, don't even have to wade through the article and can reply directly: because it's crap?!
FYI: Because I'm nice, I read it anyway xD
Info2: Exactly what I said, EA is just crap. Konami. They're totally happy with the Silent Hill sales figures, release a game every year, not a single one of which is bad, quite the opposite. Capcam has had huge success with Resident Evil, and we don't even need to start talking about all the AA or indie horror games.
Anyone stupid enough to waste millions on a lame remake that barely has any new elements, crams in fake elements everywhere, and then seriously wants €70-80 for a game that looks almost exactly like its predecessor? There's no helping them. The Dead Space remake should have been a completely new game, with lots of new elements, a different presentation, etc., and not just almost the same game with modernized graphics. I've bought every Dead Space game, and even I was amused and frustrated that EA actually wants €70-80 for the same game, just worse with modern graphics. In my opinion, both Capcom and Konamin put in more effort, changed more, and gave you reasons to buy the same game again.
It was clear that nobody wanted it that way, especially for that price. It's rather impressive that they sold 2 million.
If they had developed it more cheaply, or perhaps simply commissioned a completely new game with a new story and plot, it would have sold much better. Instead, we got a partially inferior copy of the very first title, with some things "modernized," and then we were expected to pay full price plus for it.
The game itself might be good, but everything surrounding the remake just seemed uninspired.
It depends on which platform you're coming from. Before the release, I caught up on all the games on the Xbox One X. And yes, if you played the first game at 60fps and 4K, then the graphical leap wasn't that big, it's the same as with The Last of Us Remastered and Part 1. But if you only own a PS5, then you didn't even have the option to play the old game natively, so in that sense, it was a new game.
Fuck EA, the remake was great, I would have loved to have the whole trilogy including the new part on the PS5.