EA to give Medal of Honor the Lazarus treatment
Welcome back. You're a regular here, so why not follow us on Twitter too...
With EA announcing 1,500 job cuts worldwide due to a less than spectacular performance in Q2, it’s no surprise to learn that the mega-publisher are going back to the well and rejuvenating old cash cows in an effort to keep their shareholders happy.
After all, dropping $275 million on casual studio Playfish needs to be recouped somehow.
Remember Medal of Honor? Well, soon enough you’ll be hearing a lot from the old dog as EA have announced plans to revitalise the popular FPS franchise.
Ironically, the very developers who created Medal of Honor:Allied Assault (the much-loved third iteration in the series) went off and formed Infinity Ward. And we all know what they came up with next.
With a recent CV of an ex-employee of EA mentioning a MOH title set in “modern warfare” times, it’s no shock to assume that EA’s next Medal of Honor outing will be setting itself up against the recent and great Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. After all, the latter is on track to break all retail records this week.
This isn’t the only news of EA bucking down and focusing on tried and trusted IPs. What many see as a worrying time for new IP, EA have also confirmed that up to a dozen titles in the early stages of development have now been canned in favour of their more renown counterparts.
Franchises are the way to go during these troubling economic times it seems. With Criterion on board for the next Need For Speed title, we wouldn’t be surprised to hear of other high-earning properties being confirmed and the days of taking a risk on new IP such as Mirror’s Edge and Dead Space maybe put on hold for a while.
Source: EA QA results via C&VG.
Let’s hope they fail big time eh!
I’m probably more in favour of MoH doing well – never played Airborne (customisable Thompsons seemed a bit silly to me – if I want fantasy guns I’ll play Borderlands
), but the original MOH, MOH:Underground and even MOH:Heroes on the PSP are all pretty good games. Even European Assault was a lot of fun, and had some great levels. I’d rather they brought back a once-great franchise than had it go to the dogs completely.