A sequel to Titanfall, the popular first person shooter released in March 2014, has been officially announced by publisher Electronic Arts and developer Respawn Entertainment. The game is rumored to be coming to the Playstation 4 as well as the Xbox One, unlike its Xbox-exclusive predecessor, although these suspicions have not been officially confirmed by either Electronic Arts or Respawn Entertainment.
The first Titanfall game received a number of accolades at its debut during E3 2013 but later launched to far more mixed although still generally positive reviews. Most critics praised the agility of the player characters in multiplayer and varied gameplay modes but condemned the game’s poor single-player campaign. Due to the fact that Respawn’s developers had formerly worked on immensely successful FPS franchise Call of Duty and the praise for early demos of Titanfall, expectations for the game were arguably unrealistically high. Failing to live up to these expectations caused the game’s sales figures to fall flat of what was expected according to figures released by market research company NPD group, although it still managed to climb to position as the top-selling game of March 2014. Publisher Electronic Arts has yet to release official figures themselves, only further driving speculation that the game may have been responsible for the company’s recent decline in revenue.
Despite its relatively limited success, Titanfall’s sequel is reportedly “in the planning stages” according to Gamespot. With little to no development work yet completed, there is no concrete information on what the sequel may bring to the series in order to address the criticisms of the original. If Titanfall 2 does, in fact, launch on Sony’s Playstation as well as Microsoft consoles and PCs, it may succeed in driving up sales figures for the game given that the PS4 has continues to outperform its chief competitor in sales. Access to a wider market could easily allow Titanfall to carve out a niche in the FPS market alongside major franchises like Call of Duty, given that the first entry in the series survived its lukewarm reception and Xbox-exclusive launch.
Titanfall 2 will be an immensely important release for Respawn Entertainment. If the developers can successfully patch up the flaws in their game design, they may be able to deliver on the expectations set for the original Titanfall and bring that success to a whole new sector of the video game market in the process.