EA Will Decide Anthem's Future This Week
This week, Electronic Arts is expected to make the call about the future of Anthem. The project may be abandoned or the publisher will invest heavily in its overhaul, tripling the size of the team responsible for the so-called Anthem Next.
This week will decide the fate of Anthem, BioWare's 2019 online action game. Publisher Electronic Arts will make a decision in a few days whether to abandon the project or to strengthen the team that is working on refreshing and expanding the game. Such information was revealed by Bloomberg. Journalist Jason Schreier received confirmation from three independent sources associated with EA.
The game's debut in February 2019 was not successful, both in terms of reviews and finances. The original development plans were abandoned so that the developers could focus on fixing the game's basic elements. Some time ago, there were reports that the developers were going to thoroughly rework the entire project. Last year, the developers announced that the so-called Anthem 2.0 would feature, among other things, pirates and new locations, as well as a new system of equipment and character progression. These announcements sounded promising, but now it's unclear if anything will come of them.
A team of 30 people has been working on Anthem Next (as the new incarnation of the game is currently known) for some time. However, producer Christian Dailey left BioWare in December last year, raising concerns about the future of the project.
This week, decision makers at Electronic Arts are expected to review the status of Anthem Next and decide on its future. According to Bloomberg's sources, if the developers get the green light, the team will have to increase its size at least three times to be able to not only continue overhauling the game, but also to deal with the creation of new content.
The fact that the project will require a team of about 90 people makes it not a cheap undertaking. It's hard to say whether EA will be willing to invest such resources in an attempt to salvage this project. An additional problem is that two years have passed since the launch. If the work on Anthem Next had started in full swing right after the game's debut, the situation might have been different and it's possible that we would already be enjoying a pgame that would fulfill the devs'original promises.
