EA has not had a good generation. Sure, they helped usher in some truly remarkable games like Titanfall 2 and last year's Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. They also had a lot of mishaps too and those are the things gamers are going to remember them for from this generation.
This is all to say they canceled a lot of games for the PS4 and Xbox One between 2013 and now. Maybe these were good business decisions. One needs to know when to cut losses in order to turn a profit. Again though, it can be hard for gamers to see it that way. So in honor of the next generation looming ever closer, let’s go through the past seven years and rip the band-aids off one more time.
10 Command & Conquer: Generals 2
This actually started as a sequel to Command & Conquer: Generals, which first released in 2003. This was in 2011. Then, in 2013, it was announced as a sort of reboot to the franchise and would be headed by Victory Games, which branched off from BioWare. After several more revisions of the concept, including a free to play model, EA closed the studio and canceled the game in-turn at the end of 2013. Technically this wasn’t exactly this generation as one would consider 2013 to be the beginning. It did, however end in that time period so it’s going to count.
9 Criterion Extreme Sports Racer
This was announced with no name at E3 2014. Criterion discussed their goals for the game in a developer diary, showcasing some very early concept footage and some key art. It was canceled in 2016 and Criterion was seemingly taken away from making racing games in general.
They instead worked on Star Wars Battlefront – Rogue One: X-Wing VR Mission, Star Wars Battlefront II, and Battlefield V. In 2019 they took back the Need for Speed franchise and released Need For Speed Heat, ending their six year hiatus from their bread and butter.
8 Dawngate
Dawngate was a MOBA being developed by Waystone Games. It was first shown off at E3 2013 and even went into Beta after that. Unfortunately it was canceled in 2014. This is not surprising as many MOBAs around this time were both announced and canceled as no one could top DOTA 2. The studio seems to still be around, but no work has come out if it since. It seems like EA abandoned them.
7 Shadow Realms
Shadow Realms was announced at the 2014 San Diego Comic-Con. It was being developed by BioWare and would have been a slightly different genre for them. Set in a world where teens discovered a gate to another dimension, these heroes would acquire powers and enter these realms to fight powerful bosses. It was going to be a 4v1 multiplayer RPG. It was soon canceled in 2015. There is lots of art and footage to see archived at Unseen64.
6 Warhammer Online: Wrath of Heroes
Warhammer Online: Wrath of Heroes was another early announcement for this list as it was 2011 at Gamescom. It was a MOBA being developed by BioWare Mythic based on the aforementioned Warhammer series. After some initial testing it was canceled in 2013. That’s how it counts on this list. Anyway, shortly after that EA closed Mythic down. There is some gameplay around online.
5 NBA Live
This timeline is fascinating because it includes four games. It all started with NBA Elite 11 with last-gen systems being canceled, but it still released on iOS. Then the series was rebranded as NBA Live starting with the 2012 edition (aka NBA Live 13), also for last-gen systems.
After a couple years of actually launching a product, they once again missed a year with NBA Live 17 and then again with NBA Live 20. One would think EA, holders of the FIFA and Madden licenses, could do right by basketball as well.
4 Titanfall Online
Titanfall Online was a free to play spinoff of the franchise aimed primarily at South Korea and China. It was being developed by Nexon. This type of experience is fairly common in Asian. There’s even a game called Call of Duty Online. Anyway, shortly after the Beta ended in 2018, it was canceled. For some bonus trivia, Nexon also put out Titanfall: Assault and Titanfall: Frontline for mobile devices.
3 Star Wars: Project Ragtag
The best, or more like most tragic cancellations, were saved for last. Project Ragtag was the codename for Amy Hennig’s directorial debut with Visceral Games. Some art along with about five seconds of gameplay was shown at E3 2016. Both the game and Visceral were shut down in 2017. Kotaku write a huge breakdown on the game’s concept along with how things went south.
2 Star Wars: Project Orca
Project Orca was the codename given to the redesigned version of Project Ragtag. The work moved to EA Vancouver where the game was now going to take on the role of an open-world game with services akin to Destiny, or so it seemed. Between Visceral’s cancelation and EA Vancouver’s pickup, the team worked hard on the project before it was canned in 2019. There are no assets to speak of shown publicly, but Kotaku also has a good writeup of this.
1 Star Wars: Project Viking
After Project Orca was canceled, EA Vancouver began work on Project Viking. The main branch of EA wanted a spinoff of Star Wars Battlefront ready by the launch of next-gen consoles this year. It was going to be smaller in scope and have single-player objectives with open-world elements. Criterion was set to help out, but the game was also canceled in 2019 though it was just discovered this year.