Visceral Games Star Wars Game Was Cancelled For Being Too Linear

One of the more surprising announcements this year was the closure of Dead Space develop Visceral Games and the cancellation of their Star Wars game. Today EA shed some light on why the game was canceled the studio closed.

Speaking during the Credit Suisse 21st Annual Technology, Media & Telecom Conference, EA’s chief financial officer Blake Jorgensen said, “As we kept reviewing the game, it continued to look like a much more linear game [which] people don’t like as much today as they did five years ago or 10 years ago.”

Jorgensen explained that Visceral was a "sub-scale studio" with 80 people that enlisted help from EA Vancouver and Motive to work on the Star Wars game. Jorgensen stated that the game pushed gameplay "to the next level" but mismanagement caused its downfall. Those who recall Mass Effect: Andromeda faced mismanagement issues during development as well.

Jorgensen also explained that the decision to close Visceral Games was “an economic decision at the end of the day.” EA didn’t think that it would be able to sell the necessary amount of copies of the game and, according to Jorgensen, “You gotta cut the bridge when you realize you can’t make a lot of money on something.”

Despite the clarity regarding this it probably won't make gamers feel better, especially Dead Space fans. Moreover, Jorgensen's speech only reaffirms EA's stance on single-player games and supports a former Andromeda's developer statement on how EA intends to handle single-player adventures. For them to support loot boxes and be more open-world than linear.

Adam Siddiqui, NoobFeed
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