Dead Space Producer Claims Over 10M Copies Would Be Needed for Dead Space 4 to Be Viable
Businesses need a "perennial moneymaker".
Motive
Dead Space returned in 2023 to the joy of old fans and new players, but if you're looking forward to Dead Space 4, you'll likely be disappointed.
Talking on the FRVR podcast, Chuck Beaver, former writer and producer of the series, said that the "numbers just aren’t there": a new game would need to sell over 10 million copies, he thinks.
“Horror games have a bit of a ceiling, you know, and I think the number back in [former EA VP] Frank Gibeau’s day was 5 million units to keep going on Dead Space,” he continued. “I think the number is like 15 million units now, given the cost of things.”
Alas, this is “a sadness in capitalism for all of us to suffer” until "AI makes it apparently easy for you and I to just type 'make Dead Space 4.'" Nowadays, companies want something to make them steady money.
“Any of the Resident Evils are selling around seven million [units], that’s a pretty good number,” Beaver explained. “Like you can make that hunt for some amount of stuff. But, you know, companies now are looking for the next Fortnite. They need something that is a perennial moneymaker… something like a single-player package game with no live-service offering that’s like it’s just a dinosaur fossil of a business model.”
Well, at least the people who worked on Dead Space are still willing to continue the franchise, according to the producer.
At the same time, Beaver thinks that it never felt "unfair at all" for Dead Space to be cancelled after the third game: “It wasn’t like it didn’t get a run out of it. I mean, it’s disappointing that we can’t make a beloved franchise to its logical end, but I guess I’m too much of a producer, [I’ve] been producing for too long. I understand the numbers, and I understand what’s happening, and why even Motive wasn’t really greenlit for anything after the remake.”
That said, the original creators pitched Dead Space 4 to Electronic Arts in 2024, but the publisher rejected the idea, likely for that same reason: "They know their numbers and what they have to ship." At least last year, reports claimed EA had no plans for a new game, and it probably hasn't changed.
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