14 DAY TRIAL // EA Games label boss Frank Gibeau recently talked about two of the newest Intellectual Properties launched by the company in recent years, Mirror's Edge and Dead Space, and revealed that even though they fell short of the company's expectations, work will continue on both of them, in order to reach their full potential.
The two titles were among the first in EA's new renaissance, when the company tried to distance itself from the yearly sequels it launched all the time, and tried to innovate with the help of its leading studios.
Talking about Mirror's Edge, Gibeau says that the end result was flawed, and that it needed to take even more risks in order to really capture fans.
"First-person parkour across buildings is fun, but to be blunt, Mirror's Edge's' execution fell short," he admitted.
"There were issues with the learning curve, the difficulty, the narrative, and then there was no multiplayer either," he added. "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 became a bit more popular, but what the property really needed was a multiplayer mode, according to Gibeau, which will change with the imminent release of Dead Space 2.
"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 [for the upcoming sequel], we looked at how to make it a better idea, how do we make the story more engrossing, how do we build [protagonist] Isaac as a character, how do we make this game a success online."
In conclusion, Gibeau revealed that both properties had "some degree of success," but "they didn't quite meet our expectations."
Dead Space 2 is getting ready to be released by the team at Visceral Games in January, while the fate of Mirror's Edge is unknown, as its development studio, DICE is hard at work on other games, including Battlefield 3 or Battlefield Play4Free.