Lifeless House was revealed to be permanently 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 news it’s wanting unlikely to return. So many huge, deeply beloved gaming franchises are routinely being shelved by corporations too afraid to gamble the nine-figure sums publishers imagine is important for fulfillment. But there’s such an apparent resolution!
Each time I learn a headline a few recreation franchise being shelved as a result of it’s develop into too costly, too large of a danger for a writer to gamble $200 million on, I wish to scream into the sky on the obviousness of the answer. However 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.
Within the wake of Ubisoft’s latest 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 acquired itself into a really dangerous place. Proper now, throughout this grotesque section of consolidation, with multi-billion-dollar gross sales seeing publishers devour each other, a monetary black gap is being fashioned.
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 sequence (not to mention an unique IP) turns into fantastically dangerous. To match the ridiculous valuations, the video games these corporations make are burdened with a necessity for justification, and each mission have to be predicted to herald not less than half a billion bucks to be value even storyboarding. Ubisoft has simply declared that it intends the video games it makes to yearly herald a billion {dollars} every! Growth prices subsequently develop into self-destructively excessive, with expectations of figures of not less than $200 million being spent to create one thing with sufficient spectacle to dazzle a hypothetical mainstream viewers. All the pieces now must be the following Name of Responsibility at a time when even Call of Duty can’t manage that.
Certain, welcome to capitalism 101: It doesn’t work. The necessity to at all times develop larger, for share values to at all times enhance, is a mannequin so unsustainable {that a} pre-schooler may clarify why. However 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 extra money than no recreation in any respect.
Lifeless House Needn’t Be Lifeless
The latest instance of a beloved recreation sequence being shelved is Lifeless House. In late 2025, following rumors some months before that a Dead Space 2 remake had been cancelled after the supposedly disappointing gross sales for 2023’s remake of the unique recreation, word went around that EA had put the franchise “on ice.” In December 2024 we’d additionally discovered that the series’ original creators had tried to pitch a Dead Space 4 to EA, however had been instantly rejected. A kind of unique creators, Glen Schofield, nonetheless didn’t hand over, maintaining in October last year that he was attempting to buy the IP back from EA within the wake of the company’s attempted sale to Saudi Arabia, however by December 2025 this looked incredibly unlikely. Which is loopy! As a result of a brand new Lifeless House is just not one thing EA must be in the slightest degree afraid of.
The unique Lifeless House, launched in 2008, cost approximately $37 million to make. Adjusted for inflation, that’s $55 million in 2026 cash. And that was an in-house Digital Arts studio, spending EA cash inside EA’s ludicrous company construction. I actually imagine, with my entire pretty coronary heart, {that a} well-established AA group 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 modern and novel concepts are used instead of the very fanciest trendy graphics.
Right 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 finally killing it entirely, may have been rotated 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 onerous, similar 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 continually getting in the way in which. By all reviews, 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 top-of-the-line third-person motion video games ever made, and featured a time-manipulation gimmick that ought to have develop into business commonplace. At 23 years previous, the unique remains to be a terrific 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 certain there are numerous 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 could be stunned to study simply how needlessly difficult Ubisoft has made making video games, even way back to the 2000s. . I keep in mind visiting Ubisoft Montreal for the announcement of Splinter Cell: Double Agent in 2005, and sitting of their places of work as executives defined that improvement of the sport was going down 24 hours a day by being unfold throughout not less than 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 have been a number of every day video calls (2005 video calls at that) to attempt to handle this. All through the creation of the sport it was additionally labored on by Ubisoft Toronto, Paris-based Gameloft, and North Carolina’s Pink Storm. Think about working like that. Attempt to think about a extra chaotic technique to develop a recreation. (I keep in mind asking builders the way it may presumably work, and the slightly taut smiles as they defined that it “wasn’t easy.”)
One thing > Nothing
So no, a AA group making a $50 million (or perhaps a $5 million) recreation gained’t ship the spectacle and mainstream breakthrough enchantment of Battlefield, however nor does it must. If you happen to’re spending $400m on a recreation (earlier than you even consider the price of a world 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 under no circumstances practical, then the mission can’t get greenlit within the first place. However for those who’ve spent $50m, and justifiably cost $60 for a top-quality product, you’re within the black with so many fewer gross sales. In case your recreation hits (and let’s keep in mind, we’re on this mess due to all of the $200m+ gambles which have missed), you might be in for huge income.
And it’s not fantasy figures, both! Arc Raiders announced this month that it has sold 12 million copies, which at $40 a pop quantities to $480,000,000. Yup. Half a billion bucks. Certain, minus retailer charges that’s “only” $336 million. We don’t know its improvement prices, however builders have said it was nowhere close to AAA budgets. And it is a recreation with non-obligatory in-game beauty purchases, that means that determine goes to be so a lot increased.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s builders claim it value lower than $10 million to make, and it had bought over 6 million copies by the top of 2025. Which means the $50 recreation has introduced in not less than $300,000,000 earlier than retailer tithes. That’s a 3000 p.c revenue, and these are the numbers from before the sport gained 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 purpose is, I’m not speaking out of my hat right here concerning the potential of spending far much less on a much smaller group.
Many AA groups wouldn’t be eager about making a licensed recreation utilizing another person’s IP, and truthfully, I wouldn’t wish to belief a big-name writer proper now even when I have been one who did. However many would! If you happen to’re a small group with a $10 million mission that didn’t catch hearth, you’re in a really tough place irrespective of how extremely proficient you could be. Many, many mid-size studios fold at that time, however what if there was the route of being trusted with the following Lifeless House, or Legacy of Kain, or Sleeping Canines, or Thief, or Trespasser, or Command & Conquer, or Titanfall, or Splinter Cell, or SSX, or Pink Faction, or…
Perhaps there’s some large, deadly flaw with this idea that will come to the floor on attempting. However I’m actually uncertain. The difficulty is the whole lack of ever attempting! And truthfully, of their crumbling, fire-sale-driven state, what does an Ubisoft or an EA need to lose?! There hasn’t been a Splinter Cell recreation since 2013, that means for the final 13 years exactly $0 has been made on new Splinter Cell video games. I notice that’s maybe considerably apparent, but it surely’s a extremely slightly essential level! A $10,000,000 Splinter Cell that “only” sells 1,000,000 copies at $50 a pop: that’s a 500 p.c revenue. And even when it would appear to be small change in a world the place (very, only a few) video games herald a billion {dollars}, it’s a heck of much more than $0.
