EA's Harry Potter MMO got cancelled as the game seemingly didn't have much shelf life.
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| Harry Potter MMO got cancelled by EA |
More than 500 million copies of the famous Harry Potter fiction series have been sold to date. So it is no surprise that Harry Potter has some serious fans out there. And if you are one of them, reading what follows might leave you feeling sour for multiple reasons.
Apparently, Kim Salzer, who worked as the director of product marketing for the video game company Electronic Arts (EA) from 2000-2003, stated in a Twitch interview that a massively multiplayer online (MMO) game for Harry Potter was in production at EA but got cancelled.
It was because the publisher thought the game would only stay on the shelf for a year or two, much to her dismay, because she was closely involved in the production. At the time, the publisher had the rights to the Harry Potter franchise.
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Another depressing piece of information for a Harry Potter fan: In January 2021, EA announced that it was delaying the release of Hogwarts Legacy, a Harry Potter RPG (Role-Playing Game), to 2022.
Read on to find out the details about the cancelled Harry Potter MMO.
Harry Potter MMO Was in Production but Got Cancelled
The Streamer The Real Brandolorian recently conducted an online interview with Kim Salzer. When asked about a video game that she “was really excited about, something that you knew was going to be cool, but for some reason never got made, or it got shelved,”
Salzer picked the Harry Potter MMO from among many other video games, because it was “A big one for me, because I was so personally involved in it, and it’s such a huge IP that has lived on is an online massively multiplayer game for Harry Potter.”
Kim Salzer explained why she chose the Harry Potter MMO by saying that “We did all the research, we had the beta built out, it was a combination offline/online experience where we’d actually mail stuff to the kids, like prizes and ribbons and stuff like that.”
Kim continued, “Thoroughly researched, very confident in the success of this. But it was killed, for lack of a better term, because EA was going through changes at that time and they just didn’t know or believe enough that IP would have a shelf-life longer than a year or two.”
EA came ever so close to developing a Harry Potter MMO. But it wasn't meant to be... #harrypotter #ea #mmo #videogame #hogwarts @OrigGamerLife pic.twitter.com/Dbux383HXY
— The Real Brandolorian (@Brandolorian17) December 21, 2021
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The Real Brandolorian said about the Harry Potter MMO in the caption, “it wasn’t meant to be…”
Brandon Sivret, CEO of Original Gamer Life, jokingly said that this “needs to out on the Internet.”
EA announced in January 2021 that the scheduled Harry Potter RPG game was delayed into 2022. They said, “We would like to thank fans from around the world for the tremendous reaction to the announcement of Hogwarts Legacy from our Portkey Games label.”
They explained that “creating the best possible experience for all of the Wizarding World and gaming fans is paramount to us so we are giving the game the time it needs,” before making it official that the game was delayed.
— Hogwarts Legacy (@HogwartsLegacy) January 13, 2021
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As if to add insult to injury, Warner Bros. hinted in a recent interview that the Harry Potter MMO might be released in late 2022. The general manager of Warner Bros., Rachel Wakely, spoke to Toy World magazine on the Wizarding World IP.
In the interview, she referred to the upcoming film Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore and Hogwarts Legacy as the “two major releases in 2022.” Rachel said, “From what we’ve seen, the launch will be well worth the wait and deliver a unique way for fans to interact with the franchise.”
Thankfully, that’s all there is about the Harry Potter video games. Even so, we can’t help but wonder if there might be some more bad news in store.
Currently, the only confirmed piece of news is that Hogwarts Legacy is releasing in 2022 on various platforms including PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and PC.
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