EA: Five Million People Need To Buy Dead Space 3 In Order For Series To Continue

And since that’s the case, EA says it must make viable changes to the game, like adding co-op and a bit more action, but at the same time they don’t want to “piss off” the fans.

That’s what EA Labels president Frank Gibeau is saying nowadays, most recently to CVG, reaffirming that the game’s horror roots will never be lost.

“What we’ve tried to do with each instalment is tell a different story about Isaac but at the same time bring in new features and ways to turn the game into a more connected experience,” he said. “… so we embraced [the co-op] idea and we tried to open up the accessibility of the IP a little bit by adding a little bit more action, but not undermining the horror. We can’t not be a horror game because that’s what Dead Space is … and at the same time we definitely do not want to piss off our fans by taking it too far from horror.

We’re very self aware of that – we listen to the fans and we hear them. We’re going to be releasing more assets over the coming months that show you how deep the horror is. It’s definitely not getting away from gore or horror, but at the same time it’s opening up to a larger audience by adding some elements.

In general we’re thinking about how we make this a more broadly appealing franchise, because ultimately you need to get to audience sizes of around five million to really continue to invest in an IP like Dead Space. Anything less than that and it becomes quite difficult financially given how expensive it is to make games and market them.

We feel good about that growth but we have to be very paranoid about making sure we don’t change the experience so much that we lose the fanbase.”

Dead Space 3 sees a release February 13th, 2013 for PS3, Xbox 360 and PC. There’s no plans for a Wii U version, ostensibly.