According to sources close to the studio, BioWare Montreal is now a support studio, and we won’t be seeing any new Mass Effect games any time soon. If you’ve finished Mass Effect: Andromeda, you’ll know it’s clear that it was meant to serve as a starting point for a new story in the series. However, it looks like we won’t be seeing that vision come to pass, at least not for a while.
That’s one to scratch off our upcoming PC games list.
Rather than putting BioWare Montreal straight onto an Andromeda sequel, EA have positioned them to support EA Motive on Star Wars Battlefront 2, as well as helping the other BioWare studios on their upcoming games, say Kotaku’s four sources.
As for Mass Effect, BioWare Montreal are still working on updates. In fact, we posted about their latest just a few hours ago. Read about Mass Effect: Andromeda patch 1.06 at that link.
“Our teams at BioWare and across EA put in tremendous effort bringing Mass Effect Andromeda to players around the world,” said BioWare Montreal studio director Yanick Roy in a statement to Kotaku. “Even as BioWare continues to focus on the Mass Effect Andromeda community and live service, we are constantly looking at how we’re prepared for the next experiences we will create.
“The teams in EA Worldwide Studios are packed with talent, and more than ever, we are driving collaboration between studios on key projects. With our BioWare and Motive teams sharing studio space in Montreal, we have BioWare team members joining Motive projects that are underway. We’re also ramping up teams on other BioWare projects in development.
“There will be much more to come from BioWare in the years ahead.”
In a recent earnings call, EA CEO Andrew Wilson said the company’s faith in Mass Effect was still intact, and they had a vision for the future of the franchise. With this being Montreal’s first Mass Effect, perhaps another BioWare studio will lead the charge on a new Mass Effect in a few years, once their current projects wrap up.
It’s also worth noting that nobody has been laid off, they’ve just been reshuffled to help out on other projects.