Think people are taking this "Hiatus" thing the wrong way

Apart from the fact that anything coming from any major company is screened by their PR departments. It will always be noncommital. And in this case it's done it's job. In my opinion, and having worked more than two decades in a field closely related to PR, the EA statements are pretty much confirming the rumors. At least for the time being and until they have a valid strategy where they want to go from here.

 Thanks for posting,it's plain to see the terrifying reality the Bioware brand faces.

Digital sales (DLC/Map-pack,Micro-transactions etc) are the obvious driving force behind EA's business model,which is why EA's game portfolio is multi-player focused and hence why Bioware's future secret IP is described as an "online service".

Story driven Bioware games COST too much to develop,require too much development TIME and don't bring in the type of MONEY EA wants (when compared to other EA franchises),which makes the concept of a franchise like Mass Effect being put on hiatus a real possibility.......it's sad that a story driven Bioware RPG can't compete with the likes of.........Madden,Fifa,Plants vs Zombies,Battlefield 2,Battlefront2,Titan Fall on and and on.

I mean games are harder to make today and this one was build from the ground up sooo

That's not how journalism works.

tbh this is how I' m handling it as well.

ME:A was conspicuous is its omission from the earnings call.  It was the only major release in the last quarter but nothing is said about it.  Not 'best launch for a Bioware game' like they said about DA:I on the earnings call when it came out.  Not 'Best launch for an ME game' like they said about ME:3.  Nothing about how many players were utilizing the MP, nothing.  That alone spoke volumes to me.

They made a statement supporting ME:A after they were asked it not being mentioned during the earnings report, and if its reception had anything to do with the new IP being pushed back.  What else were they going to say, they were disappointed, it didn't turn out the way they expected.

But at the same time, it cost 40 million to make IIRC, that's what, roughly 667,000 units at $60/each.  So even if they didn't get the three million in the first week they expected, they aren't going to lose any money on it.  Even if you throw the marketing money in, they probably starting making a profit past one million units sold, not counting deluxe packs or MP transactions.  I'm sure the MP will get lots of support going forward, it's the SP content that may be scarce.

What makes you think SP is more expensive than multiplayer? Multiplayer has to constantly do server work (especially if they're dedicated servers, and few games use them due to cost of maintaining). So besides servers what's next? Having to constantly rebalance weapons, abilities, yata Yates yata, it takes time and money. Then you have the maps and weapon packs that games like to sell. If a map is going to be handwritten, tested for months, and is paid for by RNG(almost every multiplayer game out there now) MicroT, it's not free. Then you have all the promotions people try to do for MP to get it hyped up to influence others to give it a go. MP isn't as big as SP ME, but it's big enough to where they aren't going to scrap it cause if the money it makes, not cause it's cheaper than SP.

Regardless, I hope you don't think EA is doing this with bioware games do to cost, but more so with the money they can gain. Have you looked at how many exclusive single player franchises have a multiplayer tacked on? Or how each has some sort if microtransaction system? It has nothing to do with SP being more expensive and MP being cheaper, it's all about the gain MP brings money wise. Which is sad if you ask me cause so many games rehash bull shot where fans have shit taste in MP games (like Andromeda). It wouldn't be so bad if devs tried making their MP different than the others out there, instead so many people copy/paste off the each  other where one game plays like another. I'd rather play gears of war over ME cause it's the top 3rd person shooter out there when it comes to multiplayer play and it's the original thing.

To be fair it was going to take maybe 5-6 years anyway for a new Mass Effect game, considering the current scheduling of titles BioWare is working on anyway.

So yeah, I think people are blowing this out of proportion.

 I pretty much feel the same way,Bioware's brand is all about the single player/story driven/RPG.......embracing the "online service" formula undermines what Bioware as a brand represents.

You make a good point and I do wonder if Bioware can actually tell a good story these day's in context of the EA game structure........the open world aspect for example isn't there for story or exploration reasons,it's a sand box made to shoot/kill stuff....so you can level up.

Thinking of it I can't remember any real story branching in Andromeda,which is the bread and butter of any Bioware game. 

I think part of it might have to do with something I read recently.  EA had to defer $54 million of Mass Effect sales outside of the last fiscal year/final quarter because of some law regarding special editions.  I don't know if the $54 million is the total sales of special editions, or just part of it (the articles I read didn't specify), but that could be part of why they didn't talk about it at the earnings call.  

We pretty much know, based on physical game sales and the fact that EA's own data shows that digital sales make up more than 60% of their total sales (and I'm guessing for a PC-heavy game and one pushed hard on Origin that it's closer to other reports of being 75% digital) that the first week of sales was somewhere between 2.5-3 million copies.