More Dead Space remakes, anyone? Sci-fi horror hit's sequels may get the treatment

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Originally published at: More Dead Space remakes, anyone? Sci-fi horror hit's sequels may get the treatment | Boing Boing

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You’d think so, but I’m guessing the Dead Space franchise’s history of poor sales probably makes EA a bit gun-shy. I believe the original games ranged from “not particularly profitable” to “active money losers.” They kept making games in the hopes that building up IP awareness would eventually lead to good sales, but sales ended up going down, instead. The new game seems to have sold alright, but would have cost significantly more to make.

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One reason they might do them is that remasters are really good ways to bring up new developers/teams. It’s a good way to learn, you have some built in audience in the form of people that played it before, and if the game was well received critically you already have a ton of free publicity out in the reviews and commentary on the old game (So…don’t expect a Dead Space 3 remake unless it loudly announces it is ignoring the original for anything but mechanics and maps :wink:)

So in some ways the risk is lower than a new team with a new game. Of course this also leads to, in my opinion, a less interesting market. I played these games. I don’t care about the new paint enough to play them again. Give me something weird instead. I will buy it just to support your risk taking, even if I turn out not to like playing it (Hi Mirror’s Edge!)

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Yeah, and that is the problem with the entirety of AAA development, especially these days - reducing risk in every possible way because the investments are so huge. It’s why everything is increasingly a remake of a sequel in a popular franchise that builds on existing marketing/IP awareness and fanbases. But with AAA dev costs being what they are now, that’s not always enough. Within that context, new Dead Space games are relatively risky. The franchise has a fanbase (there were six games, after all), but the original Dead Space series started off with “disappointing” sales and went downhill from there (not sure about the mobile game sales, but I’m guessing profits didn’t amount to much at best). That puts it behind a lot of other series that are ripe for remakes and/or sequels as they were at least seriously profitable at some point.

Weird is for sub-AAA budgets. We’re lucky if “AA” games get to be weird, these days.

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