He admits that it ”did fall on hard times” but EA will revive it ”bigger, better, badder”. The Medal of Honor series is rebooting ”into the top 10.”
”With Medal of Honor, we’re rebooting the series to get into the top 10. I was not satisfied with the sales of Airborne, and it was a project that I inherited when I came into this label, and at the very last minute,” Gibeau told Gamasutra in an interview.
”We basically had a month on it. So I looked at the future of what I wanted to build inside of the Games label, and we want to be the worldwide leaders in the shooter category, full stop.” The latest Medal of Honor instalments have waned in sales as the series became less and less popular in parallel to Call of Duty’s rise.
”We looked at the assets, the intellectual property, and the team talent that we had, it made sense to me to bring Medal of Honor back, but it had to be brought back in a new way with a new approach, and that’s what we spent the last 18 months or so working on.”
The new Medal of Honor, due October 15th, ditches the World War II scene entirely and embraces modern day conflicts and operations in Afghanistan. ”We’re really excited so far to the response to the reboot, and we haven’t even really shown that much at all.”
”We’re going to be in the Medal of Honor business for a long time,” continued Gibeau.
”It helped build the genre in terms of the shooter category. When we talk to consumers on the research level, there’s still a very strong, positive feeling about the brand. It did fall on hard times there, but the goal is to bring it back in a bigger, better, badder way.”
The true secret lies in the multiplayer: ”The power of a franchise in the shooter category is in the online component and modes.” Battlefield: Bad Company 2 developer DICE is handling the multiplayer aspect of Medal of Honor, while EA LA takes on the campaign.
Do you have faith that Medal of Honor can return to glory? Check out the new trailer.
