Titanfall Mobile Card Game Cancelled
By Rob Gordon 16 January 2017
Titanfall: Frontline, the mobile card game spin-off of the Titanfall series, is cancelled due to difficulty creating an experience that matched the original games.
Both publisher Electronic Arts and developer Respawn Entertainment have long planned for Titanfall to become a strong franchise in its own right. Included in this scope was the introduction of Titanfall spin-off mobile games, with mobile card game Titanfall: Frontline acting as one such example of this plan in action. However, things have not gone entirely as expected, as this Titanfall mobile game has now been cancelled.
The news was revealed on the official Titanfall: Frontline Facebook page, where an update was given announcing the title’s cancellation. “Titanfall: Frontline’s closed beta will be winding down in the next few days, and servers will go offline on January 20, 2017,” read the update.
The statement, which was also added to the Titanfall: Frontline website, also gave reasons behind the game’s cancellation. Apparently, it looks as though there was difficulty transferring the feeling of Titanfall gameplay from its fast-paced shooter roots into a mobile card game. “We’ve learned an incredible amount in the beta test of Titanfall: Frontline, but in the end felt the experience wasn’t ready to deliver the intense action-packed gameplay synonymous with Titanfall.”
Titanfall: Frontline was being developed by Particle City, under the publishing eye of Nexon and as part of a long-term relationship to create Titanfall spin-off games, including an Asian market free-to-play multiplayer game. It certainly seems as though this agreement is still in place, too – at least according to the statement released. “While it’s never easy to cancel a game, we’re excited to take some of the concepts we saw resonate with players and build off of them in future Titanfall mobile games.”
Although this could be seen as something of a speed bump when it comes to Titanfall cementing its place as an EA-established franchise, the publisher has routinely put forward its determination to make Titanfall a big part of the gaming landscape. This was further reiterated last year, when EA’s Chief Financial Officer Blake Jorgensen stated that the publisher planned to work with Respawn for “many, many years to come.” Hopefully, this mobile game failure will just be a minor blip.
That said, it’s been a tough time commercially for the Titanfall franchise of late. In spite of the huge critical success of Titanfall 2, with the shooter seen by many as one of the best games of 2016, the game’s sales have not been as good, with instead sales being disappointing. Given the clear quality of the game itself, hopefully Respawn Entertainment will have plenty of time to try and build upon the great gameplay of the Titanfall series so far.
