Why Didn't Dead Space Become a Breakout Hit

Dead Space was released on the PC, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 in October of last year. While the survivor-horror title sold exceptionally well at 1.5 million copies sold, it didn't become the big breakout hit that the publisher and developer Electronic Arts had hoped. So why Dead Space didn't become a mega hit for 2008 and beyond? Let's take a look at a couple of reasons.

New Intellectual Property
Dead Space is a brand new original title. Unfortunately, new franchises have a hard time selling on a market filled with established intellectual properties. While this could have been solved by heavy marketing, it did not help this PC, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 title. That is because Electronic Arts isn't known for developing new intellectual properties. Therefore, Dead Space suffered due to the less-than-stellar reputation of Electronic Arts at that time.

Release Date
The timing of release could have also been better. Dead Space was first launched in late October, which is right around the holiday season. This is usually the time in which the biggest titles from well-established franchises also come out. Being a new intellectual property, Dead Space was overlooked due to games like Call of Duty: World at War, Fallout 3, Fable 2, Gears of War II and Resistance 2. The fact of the matter is that Dead Space would have done better in terms of sales if it was released in a less crowded time of the year like the spring or summer.

No Multiplayer
Another big hurdle was the lack of multiplayer. While Electronic Arts originally planned for cooperative play, plans were scrapped in order to focus on the single player mode. A majority of the best-selling video game in recent years have multiplayer; so that decision ended up hurting the sales for Dead Space even though it did resulted in a better title overall.

Length
Yet another big problem for Dead Space is the short length. The PC, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 can be beaten in just a couple of long sittings. As a result, many gamers opted to rent the game or borrowed from another in order to play it. In fact, twice as many gamers play Dead Space than the game end of selling. So as good as the game is, the perceived value wasn't there for it to become a mega hit.

Despite the disappoint sales, Electronic Arts is planning on a sequel to Dead Space with included multiplayer support. With the Dead Space brand also gaining popularity, Dead Space 2 should be able to become a more popular game than the original.