Dead Space 4 is unlikely to happen as the franchise just doesn’t generate the numbers publisher EA is looking for, according to Chuck Beaver, who served as producer on the original Dead Space at Visceral Games.
Speaking with FRVR Podcast, during which he touched on his time working on EA’s James Bond trilogy (007: Nightfire, 007: Everything or Nothing, and 007: From Russia with Love), Beaver noted that a new Dead Space game would have to sell over 10 million copies in order to recoup the cost of the series’ high production values. He also suggested that a business model that doesn’t involve live service to continuously generated revenue isn’t going to cut it nowadays.
Any of the Resident Evils are selling around seven million [copies], that’s a pretty good number. But, you know, companies now are looking for the next Fortnite. They need something that is a perennial moneymaker… something like a single-player package game with no live-service offering that’s like it’s just a dinosaur fossil of a business model.
It wasn’t like it didn’t get a run out of it. I mean, it’s disappointing that we can’t [t]ake a beloved franchise to its logical end, but I guess I’m too much of a producer, [I’ve] been producing for too long. I understand numbers, and I understand what’s happening, and why even Motive wasn’t really greenly for anything after the remake.
Beaver is referring to EA Motive’s critically acclaimed Dead Space Remake, which launched in early 2023 and was a critical success, but reportedly failed to deliver the numbers EA was looking for.
“Horror games have a bit of a ceiling, you know, and I think the number back in [former EA VP] Frank Gibeau’s day was 5 million units to keep going on Dead Space. I think the number is like 15 million units now, given the cost of things,” he continued, joking that it’s “a sadness in capitalism for all of us to suffer, until AI makes it apparently easy for you and I just type ‘make Dead Space 4.”
Glen Schofield, who headed the original Dead Space back in 2008, revealed in December 2024 that he approached EA with two other members of the core team — Christopher Stone and Bret Robbins — to propose they helm Dead Space 4, but the publishing behemoth turned the offer down. “They just said no, we’re not interested right now,” Schofield at the time, adding, “People are really hesitant to take chances on things.”
Earlier that year, Bloomberg reported that the Dead Space franchise was effectively on ice for the second time after EA Motive apparently drafted ideas for a new entry in the sci-fi horror series, but nothing was ever given the green light. Rumours of a Dead Space 2 Remake were also shot down by EA itself after Jeff Grubb claimed the project was in development but later scrapped.