February 14, 2011 by Paul Curtin
Rumors have begun to hit the net today after Swedish gaming site Press2Play.tv reported that EA Games has decided to cancel Mirror’s Edge 2.
The first game released back in 2008 was easily one of the most unique and best games of 2008, unfortunately, Mirror’s Edge didn’t meet sales expectations, mostly due to a lack of marketing that failed to create buzz around the game. Back in 2009 Electronic Art’s President John Ritccitello told the press that the first game “deserved a sequel”. Also at E3 2009, EA’s Senior Vice President Patrick Soderlund confirmed that a small team was working on a sequel. Soderlund’s latest quote from Press2Play doesn’t look good for fans of the series:
“Patrick [Soderlund – EA driving and shooting game boss] acknowledges that Mirror’s Edge didn’t match up to their expectations regarding sales, and that has stopped the sequel that has been in development,” declared the report, published originally in December. “EA was shown a prototype, but declined with askance. The project has been stopped – involved parties at DICE are working on something else now. Patrick himself seems to have Mirror’s Edge near his heart, but they are not in the business of charity.”
I really hope that Electronic Arts reconsiders scrapping the sequel and the game is still alive. EA Games also released the original Dead Space in 2008 which was an amazing game that failed to reach sales expectations due to poor marketing. But EA pushed forward and released a sequel last month that is now outselling the original 2 to 1 due to a previous fan base and much better marketing campaign.
Dead Space 2 is proof that a successful series can be built around an amazing original game that didn’t preform as well as it should sales-wise. The innovative player movement style from Mirror’s Edge is already being implemented into current first-person shooters in development by other studios and I would love to see what the developers of the first game could improve upon given a couple years since the release of the original game.
