UPDATE: EA denies Dead Space 4 cancellation rumors

UPDATE: EA says rumors about the cancellation of an unannounced Dead Space 4 are "patently false," according to Gamasutra. The publisher told us: "While we have not announced sales for Dead Space 3, we are proud of the game and the franchise remains an important IP to EA." The original story follows.

Electronic Arts is rumoured to have shelved plans for Dead Space 4 after its predecessor failed to live up to internal sales targets.

An anonymous VideoGamer source claims a fourth numbered entry in the series was in pre-production at Visceral Games, but that EA has ceased development “and effectively axed the series”.

Army of Two: The Devil's Cartel developer Visceral Games Montreal, which was reportedly contributing to the new Dead Space project, is rumoured to have been closed last month amid confirmed but unspecified EA layoffs across a number of studios. EA has so far declined to comment on reports of Dead Space’s demise.

Last June, EA Labels president Frank Gibeau said the publisher was examining how it could make the series more broadly appealing. He told CVG: “Ultimately you need to get to audience sizes of around five million to really continue to invest in an IP like Dead Space. Anything less than that and it becomes quite difficult financially given how expensive it is to make games and market them.”

According to today’s report, EA requested that Visceral focus on action over horror in a bid to make February’s Dead Space 3 “more like BioWare's Mass Effect” series. We said in our Dead Space 3 review: “The biggest change to come to the series is its evolution to an all-out action game with freaky monsters. As such, survival horror fans may be left wanting.”