Digital Arts has simply lower up one in all it is marquee upcoming video games, the Black Panther recreation that Cliffhanger Video games had been engaged on.
First reported by IGN, the knowledge got here from an electronic mail despatched by EA Leisure president Laura Miele, who shared that this alteration alongside others was to place their focus the place they thought there was the chance for essentially the most progress. Past Cliffhanger Video games, and different latest cancellations like with Respawn and an untitled Titanfall challenge, folks have been laid off on its cellular, and central groups. Whereas that is believed to be lower than was laid off final month’s 300 folks, it’s nonetheless a major quantity.
Cliffhanger Video games was introduced in 2023 together with the announcement of the Black Panther challenge, though formation of the crew started in 2021 with Kevin Stephens, previously of Monolith Productions tagged because the studio lead. From the getgo, the purpose was to focus on an space that EA has seemingly had some hassle with – the open world journey class, significantly with sandboxes.
Stephens, a former VP at Monolith, introduced expertise engaged on the Center-Earth: Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of Battle video games which had been successes within the style, with Shadow of Mordor a very progressive title. Rumors that it was a Black Panther recreation they had been doing started circulating in 2022, a 12 months earlier than it was revealed.
Based on Miele, EA can be serving to folks discover alternatives inside EA, which means that we might even see much less folks laidoff than we might in any other case, as an alternative merely having to uproot their lives on the whims of company choices. The e-mail additionally tells us a little bit of what we will count on from EA Leisure (Sports activities is it is personal division): a concentrate on a handful of franchises. These can be Battlefield, The Sims, Skate, and Apex Legends. Miele states that the Iron Man recreation in work at Motive Studios will proceed, as will the third Star Wars: Jedi recreation, and Bioware’s work on the subsequent Mass Impact recreation. This comes additionally after they introduced the pausing of varied racing video games that had been within the works earlier this month.
One lacking recreation from that checklist nevertheless is the third unannounced Marvel recreation that EA signed a deal for again after they introduced Iron Man as a part of a 3 recreation deal. Whether or not that recreation continues, or whether it is by no means to even be introduced is unknown with EA souring on work with licensed properties. After all, we must always take any future plans with a grain of salt – solely two months in the past Cliffhanger Video games was seeking to fill various roles, and now it is shutting down.
Thus we will add Black Panther to the lengthy checklist of video games we’ll by no means see, with its temporary teaser being nearly all the general public footage that there’s of it.