EA as soon as canceled an MMO primarily based on Harry Potter as a result of they mistakenly thought the IP wouldn’t last more than one or two years. The revelation got here from ex-EA Director of Product Advertising Kim Salzer as she recorded an interview in her present position as fractional Chief Advertising Officer at Authentic Gamer Life.
The Harry Potter MMO had managed to get previous the prototyping stage and right into a playable beta that the corporate was actively testing with younger gamers earlier than it was canceled. When requested about video games that “she knew was gonna be actually cool” however that was later canned or shelved indefinitely, Salzer defined extra:
generally I simply don’t know the place to begin, however an enormous one for me, as a result of I used to be so personally concerned in it and it’s such an enormous IP that has lived on, is an internet massively multiplayer sport for Harry Potter. We did all of the analysis. We had the beta constructed out. It was a mix offline/on-line expertise the place we’d really mail stuff to the youngsters like prizes and ribbons and stuff like that. Completely researched, very assured within the success of this. But it surely was killed, for lack of a greater time period, as a result of EA was going via some modifications at the moment they usually simply didn’t know or imagine sufficient that that IP would have a shelf life longer than a 12 months or two.
It was fairly loopy to look again at and there had been a number of work executed. And it was a enjoyable one too as a result of we have been doing analysis with children and we didn’t get to do this fairly often again then in gaming, proper. And that was actually only a enjoyable one to do.
Admittedly the hype for the franchise grew stronger with every e book that was launched and was not as rabid in 1997 because it was in later years, however with hindsight it looks like an unbelievable conclusion to achieve for canceling the sport. EA did later go on to publish the entire Harry Potter film tie-in video games, beginning with Harry Potter and the Thinker’s Stone in 2001 and concluding with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Half 2 in 2011. At the least, the franchise will proceed onwards within the online game world with the upcoming launch of Hogwarts Legacy in 2022, this time printed by Warner Bros. Video games.
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