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EA DICE’s highly-anticipated first-person title Mirror’s Edge missed commercial and critical targets within Electronic Arts, a key exec has said.
Frank Gibeau, who inherited the presidency of the EA Games label in 2008, said the lesson learned from Mirror’s Edge was “you have to execute, you have to spend more time on a game to ensure it’s polished, and you need to have the depth and persistence of an online game.”
In a new interview with Develop, he said: “First-person parkour across buildings is fun, but to be blunt, Mirror’s Edge’s’ execution fell short.”
“There were issues with the learning curve, the difficulty, the narrative, and then there was no multiplayer either.
“The key learning from us was that if you’re going to be bold with that kind of concept, you need to take it as far as it can go in development.”
Gibeau said Mirror’s Edge and horror title Dead space each had “some degree of success, but they didn’t quite meet our expectations, for sure.”
Both titles marked a renewed focus for EA, as the firm shifts away from licence-based game tie-ins and looks to establish its own IP.
Unlike Mirror’s Edge, Dead Space turned a profit, Gibeau said.
“It made money for us, but didn’t hit expectations. We felt like we had an IP that struck a chord, and one that hit quality, but again it missed multiplayer modes.
“So when we re-worked Dead Space [for the upcoming sequel], we looked at how to make it a better idea, how do we make the story more engrossing, how do we build [protagonist] Isaac as a character, how do we make this game a success online.”
Gibeau insisted that, beyond anything else, the fim “won’t give up on those IPs”.
“A new idea obviously has a lot of risk attached to it, but if you get it all right it can be huge,” he added.
The full interview with Gibeau can be found here.
