Dead Space was revealed to be completely on ice final 12 months. We haven’t seen a non-VR model of the Thief franchise since 2014. Deus Ex has lain dormant for a decade. Titanfall 2 additionally got here out ten years in the past. There hasn’t been a brand new 3D Prince of Persia for 16 years, and with this week’s information it’s trying unlikely to return. So many huge, deeply cherished gaming franchises are routinely being shelved by firms too afraid to gamble the nine-figure sums publishers imagine is important for achievement. Yet there’s such an apparent resolution!
Every time I learn a headline a couple of recreation franchise being shelved as a result of it’s change into too costly, too huge of a threat for a writer to gamble $200 million on, I wish to scream into the sky on the obviousness of the answer. But now, following the 2025 success of video games like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Arc Raiders, Lies of P, and Helldivers 2, certainly the reply is obvious to everybody? License these as soon as big-name franchises to confirmed mid-size AA groups, and don’t intervene.
In the wake of Ubisoft’s newest disastrous plan to rearrange itself by cancelling a number of tasks, and the seemingly fixed drip of main publishers shelving main franchises, all whereas big firm buys big firm for imaginary cash, the business has clearly bought itself into a really dangerous place. Right now, throughout this grotesque part of consolidation, with multi-billion-dollar gross sales seeing publishers devour each other, a monetary black gap is being shaped.
With the colossally over-inflated costs concerned in these offers, these shopping for are both borrowing closely from predatory buyers or playing big stakes of their very own fortunes, such that the sheer notion of making a brand new recreation in a once-loved collection (not to mention an unique IP) turns into fantastically dangerous. To match the ridiculous valuations, the video games these firms make are burdened with a necessity for justification, and each mission have to be predicted to usher in at the least half a billion bucks to be value even storyboarding. Ubisoft has simply declared that it intends the video games it makes to yearly usher in a billion {dollars} every! Development prices subsequently change into self-destructively excessive, with expectations of figures of at the least $200 million being spent to create one thing with sufficient spectacle to dazzle a hypothetical mainstream viewers. Everything now must be the subsequent Call of Duty at a time when even Call of Duty can’t handle that.
Sure, welcome to capitalism 101: It doesn’t work. The have to at all times develop greater, for share values to at all times improve, is a mannequin so unsustainable {that a} pre-schooler might clarify why. But right here’s the factor, additionally simply grasped by toddlers: a reasonably profitable recreation that prices round $50 million to develop will make an terrible lot more cash than no recreation in any respect.
Dead Space Needn’t Be Dead
The most up-to-date instance of a beloved recreation collection being shelved is Dead Space. In late 2025, following rumors some months earlier than that a Dead Space 2 remake had been cancelled after the supposedly disappointing gross sales for 2023’s remake of the unique recreation, phrase went round that EA had put the franchise “on ice.” In December 2024 we’d additionally realized that the collection’ unique creators had tried to pitch a Dead Space 4 to EA, however had been instantly rejected. One of these unique creators, Glen Schofield, nonetheless didn’t hand over, sustaining in October final 12 months that he was trying to purchase the IP again from EA within the wake of the corporate’s tried sale to Saudi Arabia, however by December 2025 this appeared extremely unlikely. Which is loopy! Because a brand new Dead Space just isn’t one thing EA must be in the least afraid of.
The unique Dead Space, launched in 2008, price roughly $37 million to make. Adjusted for inflation, that’s $55 million in 2026 cash. And that was an in-house Electronic Arts studio, spending EA cash inside EA’s ludicrous company construction. I actually imagine, with my complete pretty coronary heart, {that a} well-established AA staff can be simply able to making a recreation of the caliber of that first, wonderful horror-shooter for even much less cash than that, particularly if revolutionary and novel concepts are used rather than the very fanciest fashionable graphics.
© Ubisoft
Here’s one other factor my coronary heart believes: That Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time remake that Ubisoft was unable to make for six agonizing years earlier than ultimately killing it solely, might have been circled by any variety of wonderful smaller groups. I’m not suggesting for a second it could be straightforward to take action—it could be fantastically arduous, identical to making another top-quality recreation—however it could be eminently achievable. Not least as a result of, not being made internally at Ubisoft, it wouldn’t have Ubisoft always getting in the best way. By all studies, Sands of Time‘s remake went through multiple iterations, scrapped and started over at least twice, and eventually was the victim of so much feature-creep that it was adding all-new powers, making Farah an entirely different character (for the better, I should add, but in the most complex way), and adding all-new content.
However, in the hands of a super-capable and proven AA team with a proclivity for the genre and a love of the original, it could have been a far more straightforward process. That 2003 original doesn’t want new powers, nor new ranges, as a result of it was fantastically good. It’s the most effective third-person motion video games ever made, and featured a time-manipulation gimmick that ought to have change into business commonplace. At 23 years previous, the unique remains to be a fantastic recreation, however a clunky and dated one that will profit so splendidly from a contemporary refresh. And that’s all anybody had ever been hoping for from Ubisoft.
I’m positive there are a lot of throwing up their arms and claiming that I’m over-simplifying issues right here. And sure, I’m being perfunctory, however I’d argue that’s as a result of that is all relative. You may be stunned to study simply how needlessly difficult Ubisoft has made making video games, even way back to the 2000s. . I bear in mind visiting Ubisoft Montreal for the announcement of Splinter Cell: Double Agent in 2005, and sitting of their workplaces as executives defined that growth of the sport was going down 24 hours a day by being unfold throughout at the least three worldwide studios. When Montreal completed work, they tagged in Ubisoft Milan, who would then cross the baton to Ubisoft Shanghai, after which again to Montreal. There had been a number of every day video calls (2005 video calls at that) to attempt to handle this. Throughout the creation of the sport it was additionally labored on by Ubisoft Toronto, Paris-based Gameloft, and North Carolina’s Red Storm. Imagine working like that. Try to think about a extra chaotic solution to develop a recreation. (I bear in mind asking builders the way it might presumably work, and the fairly taut smiles as they defined that it “wasn’t easy.”)
© Ubisoft
Something > Nothing
So no, a AA staff making a $50 million (or perhaps a $5 million) recreation received’t ship the spectacle and mainstream breakthrough attraction of Battlefield, however nor does it have to. If you’re spending $400m on a recreation (earlier than you even think about the price of a worldwide promotional marketing campaign and wildly costly influencer occasions), you want it to be bringing in numbers as near a billion {dollars} as doable. If that’s by no means life like, then the mission can’t get greenlit within the first place. But should you’ve spent $50m, and justifiably cost $60 for a top-quality product, you’re within the black with so many fewer gross sales. If your recreation hits (and let’s bear in mind, we’re on this mess due to all of the $200m+ gambles which have missed), you could possibly be in for huge income.
And it’s not fantasy figures, both! Arc Raiders introduced this month that it has bought 12 million copies, which at $40 a pop quantities to $480,000,000. Yup. Half a billion bucks. Sure, minus retailer charges that’s “only” $336 million. We don’t know its growth prices, however builders have said it was nowhere close to AAA budgets. And it is a recreation with optionally available in-game beauty purchases, which means that determine goes to be so a lot greater.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s builders declare it price lower than $10 million to make, and it had bought over 6 million copies by the tip of 2025. That means the $50 recreation has introduced in at the least $300,000,000 earlier than retailer tithes. That’s a 3000 % revenue, and these are the numbers from earlier than the sport received all of the 2025 GOTY awards and the gross sales that may have resulted from that.
These are actually stand-out examples from final 12 months (though solely a few of them), however these are figures Ubisoft or EA would promote their grandchildren’s souls to see. The level is, I’m not speaking out of my hat right here in regards to the potential of spending far much less on a much smaller staff.
© EA
Many AA groups wouldn’t be considering making a licensed recreation utilizing another person’s IP, and actually, I wouldn’t wish to belief a big-name writer proper now even when I had been one who did. But many would! If you’re a small staff with a $10 million mission that didn’t catch fireplace, you’re in a really tough place regardless of how extremely gifted you may be. Many, many mid-size studios fold at that time, however what if there was the route of being trusted with the subsequent Dead Space, or Legacy of Kain, or Sleeping Dogs, or Thief, or Trespasser, or Command & Conquer, or Titanfall, or Splinter Cell, or SSX, or Red Faction, or…
Maybe there’s some huge, deadly flaw with this idea that will come to the floor on making an attempt. But I’m actually uncertain. The challenge is the whole lack of ever making an attempt! And actually, of their crumbling, fire-sale-driven state, what does an Ubisoft or an EA should lose?! There hasn’t been a Splinter Cell recreation since 2013, which means for the final 13 years exactly $0 has been made on new Splinter Cell video games. I understand that’s maybe considerably apparent, nevertheless it’s a extremely fairly vital level! A $10,000,000 Splinter Cell that “only” sells one million copies at $50 a pop: that’s a 500 % revenue. And even when it’d look like small change in a world the place (very, only a few) video games usher in a billion {dollars}, it’s a heck of much more than $0.
