Alien: Isolation 2 probably isn’t gonna happen

Sure, Alien: Isolation wasn’t without its faults, but we really enjoyed Creative Assembly’s foray into the survival horror genre (see our review). So much, in fact, that we were pretty confident that we’d see a sequel in the future.

However, according to an interview Creative Assembly’s Studio Director Tim Heaton gave with Games Industry, it doesn’t look very likely due to lower than expected sales.

Two point one million sales? It just didn’t break out. Am I happy about that? I’m not happy about that, right. I think it did under-index in America. I think the genre just didn’t shine with an audience that would let us break out. Two million is fine, right – let’s be clear – but we were unsure right till the very end about whether we would hit that break out space or not.

Making a AAA console game is bloody hard. We absolutely sweated blood for that game, we came through, and felt really happy at the end of it.

Alien: Isolation 2 is not out of the question, because we’re so proud of it and there’s possibly more to be said. But do we really want to be spending very significant amounts of money, and getting close to break-even or just about in the black? That’s not where SEGA wants to be, when we have a brilliant portfolio of other games that do great business.

We knew SEGA was hoping for the game to be a big hit, and it’s a sad time we live in when a game can sell 2.1 million copies and be deemed a disappointment. However, like Heaton suggested, all hope is not lost for a sequel because SEGA has done crazier things in the past, like funding a sequel to Sonic Boom on 3DS.