In May of 2017 it emerged that EA was putting the Mass Effect franchise on hold. The publisher was unhappy with the performance of the recently released Mass Effect Andromeda in terms of sales, critical reception, and fan reaction. As well as scaling back developer BioWare Montreal and moving much of its staff to EA Motive to work on Star Wars Battlefront II, the series was effectively put in hiatus.
However, EA executive Patrick Soderlund has made it clear that the company would welcome the return of the franchise if it could be revisited in an exciting and relevant way.
“I’ve seen people saying ‘Oh EA’s not making another Mass Effect,'” Soderlund told Gamereactor in a recent itnerview. “I see no reason why we shouldn’t come back to Mass Effect. Why not? It’s a spectacular universe, it’s a loved [series], it has a big fanbase, and it’s a game that has done a lot for EA and for BioWare.
“What we need to be careful of, though, is whenever we bring Mass Effect back again, we have to make sure that we bring it back in a really [relevant] way, and in a fresh, exciting place. That’s my job, and that’s Casey’s [Hudson] job, and BioWare and the Mass Effect team’s job, to figure out what that looks like, and that we don’t know yet, but we will.”
