Electronic Arts has announced that it is closing down Visceral Studios. Visceral Studios was the team behind the Dead Space series, and was working on a brand new action adventure Star Wars game. Unfortunately, though, EA decided to restart this Star Wars project with a new team, and is shutting down Visceral Studios.
According to EA, the game simply did not meet its expectations.
“In its current form, it was shaping up to be a story-based, linear adventure game. Throughout the development process, we have been testing the game concept with players, listening to the feedback about what and how they want to play, and closely tracking fundamental shifts in the marketplace. It has become clear that to deliver an experience that players will want to come back to and enjoy for a long time to come, we needed to pivot the design.”
Electronic Arts claimed that it will shift as many of the team as possible to other projects and teams at it. Now I can’t help but remember the story with Slightly Mad Studios, and how EA – according to Ian Bell – tried to close the studio. Sounds a bit familiar?
Electronic Arts also stated that it will shift the game to be a broader experience that allows for more variety and player agency. The game will still be using the Frostbite Engine. It will also reimagine central elements of the game to give players a Star Wars adventure of greater depth and breadth to explore.
And that is that. Visceral Studios is no more. Unfortunately we won’t ever know what this Star Wars game was all about, and whether its new version will be dumbed down in order to appeal to a broader audience.
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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