Earlier today the boys and gals over at Videogamer. com posted a news story claiming that Dead Space 4 had been cancelled due to the poor sales of Dead Space 3. This news came an anonymous source that was “familiar” with the currently unannounced Dead Space 4. According to this source Dead Space 4 was already in pre-production at Visceral, with  Visceral Montreal tossing around potential narrative ideas, and creating prototypes and mock ups for the game.

The source then goes on to say that Dead Space 4 was then cancelled due to the poor sales of Dead Space 3. According to the source EA executives visited Visceral Montreal last month to break the news that the game had been cancelled, and to announced details of the company’s restructuring. Current rumours say that Visceral Montreal has been closed.

Perhaps even more interesting was the source’s comments regarding Dead Space 3, stating that the game was almost cancelled during development, and had numerous budget cuts throughout production. Apparently EA also advised Visceral to try to make the game appeal to a wider audience than the previous two games, with more emphasis on action to make the game feel more like Mass Effect.

However, both EA and Visceral are quick to call these reports false. When contacted for response, EA are saying, “While we have not announced sales data for Dead Space 3, we are proud of the game and it remains an important IP for EA.”

Over on NeoGaf a member of Visceral responded by saying, “I’m not sure who the source is for that article but much of it is completely false based on my knowledge.” Although it’s important to note that he does say, “much of” the report is false. Exactly what parts of it were and were not remains unknown.

Meanwhile on Twitter Dino Ignacio of Visceral says this:

So, conflicting rumors abound, but at this point it seems like Videogamer’s source was speaking nonsense. Mind you, in this day of PR it’s pretty hard to tell who is telling the truth. Regardless, Dead Space 3 certainly was a rather different game from its predecessors, and so far sales have been less than Dead Space 2’s, though no official figures have been released by EA.