Published , by Ozzie Mejia
Published , by Ozzie Mejia
Over the last few weeks, there was word that Electronic Arts would decide on the fate of Anthem's revamp, Anthem Next. Some people were surprised to hear that, not so much because they were curious about Anthem's fate, but because they were more surprised that Anthem's continuing existence was still being debated. Well, if Anthem wasn't dead before, it appears to be dead now, because Anthem Next looks to be no more.
The following was posted to the BioWare website on Wednesday:
Friends,
In the spirit of transparency and closure we wanted to share that we’ve made the difficult decision to stop our new development work on Anthem (aka Anthem NEXT). We will, however, continue to keep the Anthem live service running as it exists today.
Since Anthem’s launch, the team has been working hard to continually improve the game, releasing multiple updates that brought with them a variety of improvements and introduced new content to play. Towards the end of 2019 we expanded on that effort and started working on a more fundamental restructure of the game.
During the development we’ve provided updates revealing some of the team’s work through blog posts and conversations with you on social media and it’s been inspiring for us to see the positive reactions and feedback. I’ve been incredibly proud of the work the team has been doing, and excited to see and play each new build of the experience.
2020 was a year unlike any other however and while we continue to make progress against all our game projects at BioWare, working from home during the pandemic has had an impact on our productivity and not everything we had planned as a studio before COVID-19 can be accomplished without putting undue stress on our teams.
I know this will be disappointing to the community of Anthem players who have been excited to see the improvements we’ve been working on. It’s also disappointing for the team who were doing brilliant work. And for me personally, Anthem is what brought me to BioWare, and the last two years have been some of the most challenging and rewarding experiences of my career.
Game development is hard. Decisions like these are not easy. Moving forward, we need to laser focus our efforts as a studio and strengthen the next Dragon Age, and Mass Effect titles while continuing to provide quality updates to Star Wars: The Old Republic.
To the Anthem community, thank you for your passion and creativity. Your feedback and suggestions most certainly help shape the team’s direction, and on a personal note, your kindness and encouragement were much needed last year.
Please stay safe and be kind to each other. Strong alone, stronger together.
Bloomberg's Jason Schreier also confirmed the cancellation on Wednesday. This comes following a February 9 report that EA executives would meet that week to ultimately decide Anthem's fate. When that week came and went with no indication of the game's future, things didn't look good. Sure enough, Anthem Next now looks to be dead, despite BioWare hoping to salvage the game as recently as last summer. Unfortunately, it looked like there were too many hurdles for BioWare to overcome. As we noted in our review, Anthem was not good at all and with COVID-19 impacting development, too much time had passed to save the project.
Anthem will continue to exist in its current form. However, this is the end for the game, as BioWare will now focus on Dragon Age 4, Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, and Star Wars: The Old Republic. We'll follow the Anthem story (or lack thereof) here at Shacknews, so stay tuned for the latest.