‘Anthem Next’ revamp abandoned by EA & BioWare following internal review
Anthem Next, BioWare’s complete revamp of the unsuccessful Anthem game, has now been cancelled following an internal review.
Anthem, which was released on February 22, 2019, jumped into a cluttered landscape of looter-shooters and did little to stand out from the pack. The game fell flat for a lot of players and was subject to some poor reviews that never seemed to get any better.
BioWare, the game’s developers, are well-known for making high-quality games like Mass Effect and Dragon’s Age. The failure of Anthem hit them hard, but they were dedicated to improving the experience for all players.
Months after the game’s release, BioWare and EA announced Anthem Next. The new update promised to breathe life back into the game, just as updates to No Man’s Sky and Destiny have in the past.
Unfortunately, on February 24, 2021, BioWare shared some bad news with the Anthem fanbase. “In the spirit of transparency and closure we wanted to share that we’ve made the difficult decision to stop our new development work on Anthem (aka Anthem NEXT),” they wrote in a blog post.
The team assured players that they would “continue to keep the Anthem live service running as it exists today.”
With this decision, BioWare and EA will be moving some of their developers away from Anthem Next to better “focus our efforts as a studio and strengthen the next Dragon Age, and Mass Effect titles while continuing to provide quality updates to Star Wars: The Old Republic.”
It looks like Anthem’s last hope of being the game that fans expected has been abandoned. Hopefully, the additional focus on other BioWare IPs pay off in the future.
Image Credit: EA/BioWare
