Editor's Note: A spokesperson told Joystiq - "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,"

UPDATE: Seems that the source in question exaggerated A LOT of this. A member of the studio in question already said on Twitter that the studio is not going away, but little else. On top of that, EA's been denying the current rumors. I'll provide another update when more information finally becomes available.

To be honest, I was wishing this wouldn't happen, but it seemed like from the announcement that Dead Space was doomed as a series.

You may remember that EA said if Dead Space 3 doesn't manage to sell 5 million copies, an insane number for anything that isn't Call of Duty) it would be put down for not making enough back in sales to justify the budget. For those wondering why so many of us complain about how much games cost today and how AAA companies doing badly is mostly their own damn fault, here's some proof. Early reports are saying that EA is indeed canning the already in development Dead Space 4 because pouring obscene amounts of money into a niche title just won't make them obscene amounts of money. EA good at business, ook ook!

But it gets worse. Visceral Montreal seems to be going under restructuring and Dead Space 3 somehow saw constant budget cuts during development. How much was this massive bastard supposed to be in the first place if making cuts still mean that not selling five fucking million units somehow means no profit was made!?

And it gets worse still, mainly in conformation of a few things a lot of us suspected. If this source is to be believed, universal ammo was indeed put into Dead Space to accommodate the weapon crafting system. A system that EA forced in microtransations, eith EA's goal being to have the series focus more on action than horror to reach a wider audience, thus causing their established horror fans to leave in disappointment.

The games final sales still aren't out, but its being reported that it's sold more than a quarter percent less in the UK than number two. It seems that EA's strategy to make every game with guns in to a mindless action game has backfired horrifically, and that's not a pun because Dead Space 3 isn't a horror game. The really funny part is that Capcom could have told them that with Resident Evil 6, which sold batshit crazy good and was somehow still considered a disappointment, despite matching the numbers EA wanted for Dead Space 3.

The AAA gaming industry is self-destructive. These bloated budgets are getting out of hand and seeing Sony focus less on graphical power for their next console is one of the few things that has me excited, mainly because it means it won't be as easy for developers and publishers to shoot themselves in the foot by putting too much damn money in a project that doesn't need all that damn money.

Of course, based on EA's past blunders, don't expect them to learn much and only expect them to lose even more money. They're already doing badly, what with putting their company on sale a few months back, so its looking like they'll be the first major example of how not to handle business in the gaming industry. I doubt they'll crash (Madden prints money), but they're going to shrink, especially since Battlefield 3 hasn't taken down the current king in paranoid white people with guns gaming.

On one final note, I didn't want to see Dead Space 3 fail. I really want to play the first two games in the series because they pretty much seem to be Resident Evil 4 IN SPACE!!! and I'm all down for that, but all the executive meddling pretty much put the nail in the coffin.

Oh, and this:

lol