Apologies in advance for questioning some genuinely bold risks taken with two innovative games like Dead Space and Mirror’s Edge, but neither had stellar sales the way James Bond used to have for you. Isn’t the idea here to publish a game that sells as well as the old Bond games did?
Well both of those games had some degree of success but they didn’t quite meet our expectations, for sure. I think the reasons why, in both cases, are very different.
What I learned from Mirror’s Edge is that you have to execute, you have to spend more time on a game to ensure it’s polished, and you need to have the depth and persistence of an online game.
First-person parkour across buildings is fun, but to be blunt, Mirror’s Edge’s’ execution fell short.
There were issues with the learning curve, the difficulty, the narrative, and then there was no multiplayer either. The key learning from us was that if you’re going to be bold with that kind of concept, you need to take it as far as it can go in development.
Dead Space was different. It made money for us, but didn’t hit expectations. We felt like we had an IP that struck a chord, and one that hit quality, but again it missed multiplayer modes. So when we re-worked Dead Space, we looked at how to make it a better idea, how do we make the story more engrossing, how do we build Isaac as a character, how do we make this game a success online.
But one thing I will say is that we won’t give up on those IPs. A new idea obviously has a lot of risk attached to it, but if you get it all right it can be huge.
