It would be an understatement to claim that the video game industry has had a “bad week.” Yes, even with today’s launch of a major title from Square Enix, the overall news of the week is grim. There were hacks into companies, and two significant publishers went and shut down studios and laid off large amounts of staff. The latest of them was Electronic Arts, who announced yesterday that they were laying off nearly 700 employees, which meant many games got canceled. But what many are wondering is, will the next Mass Effect game be affected by this?
There are many ways to answer that question. The immediate thing to note is that EA still owns Bioware, and yet, they weren’t specifically detailed in the report about having people laid off. That could be seen as “good news.” However, you must also remember that Bioware went through layoffs last year, leaving many wondering about the state of their games. Fast forward to now, and a report from IGN claims that the next Mass Effect title is still in the works…but there’s still a big catch.
What’s the catch? Well, that would be that the game is still in the pre-production phase of development. That’s right, they’re not working actively on actually developing the title; they’re just working on blocking it all out. That’s going to strike fans as odd for many reasons, not the least of which is that during the latest N7 Day, Bioware showed a teaser for what was presumed to be the next game in the franchise. It had a slick look, a mysterious main character with an even slicker outfit, and so on.
Yet, if this report is to be believed, whatever game that was teasing won’t be coming out for several years, some other websites were even wondering if we’d get to see this game in this decade!
Plus, remember, Bioware is currently working on a different RPG franchise right now, and that one is taking up all of their time and attention because they’re trying to get it out ASAP. So, between that and the layoffs that they did last year, it’s very likely that they don’t have the manpower or the bandwidth to make the next entry in the spacefaring saga.
We know this will be a disappointment to many because Bioware HAS been teasing the 5th entry for some time, and now it appears they’ll be teasing it for an even LONGER period of time.
