Gibeau: "You've got to stick with" new IP

EA Games president Frank Gibeau has commented on the publisher's decision to stand by new IP Dead Space rather than retreat to safer grounds, and said that it takes a few titles to really launch a new franchise.

"When you’re launching a new IP it’s very rare that the first game comes out and blows the doors off and that’s the end," Gibeau told Edge, speaking of Dead Space.

"It took until the third Grand Theft Auto to have a hit, a few Call Of Dutys and a few Medal Of Honors."

But EA intends to hold on, naysayers be damned.

"You've got to stick with it. It isn’t always easy because there are analysts, press and investors that don’t like it, get p**sed and want stuff now, but you have to be confident in your team and resolute hat it is the right idea.

"The things we had with Dead Space 2 worked and it felt good, but we also had a lot of shocks to the system in how the IP developed; we had some people leave the company, found a great benchmark, had a succession plan in place and made a better game that is outselling the original. We feel really good about it."

Not that EA is so devoted to its ideals that it won't consult a few metrics here and there.

"The cool thing about making games now is that you have a lot of telemetry and analytics coming in from user behaviour, on what levels they churned on, what they liked and didn’t like and then going out and fine-tuning changes to you can make a Dead Space into a Dead Space 2 or Dragon Age into Dragon Age 2," Gibeau added.

"You can add more, take away things they didn’t like and make a better product.

"You have to give the same team the opportunity to make the same game through multiple iterations to hit their potential," he reiterated.

Dead Space 2 has outsold its precursor, but John Riccitiello has said the third entry will be the game changer.

Thanks, Go Nintendo.