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Medal of Honor Didn’t Meet Our Expectations

Medal of Honor, the series reboot developed by Danger Close and DICE, "didn’t meet our quality expectations," admitted Electronic Arts Europe vice president Patrick Soderlund to Eurogamer.
As most shooter fans would know by now, the latest Medal of Honor was released last month to mostly warm but not exactly ecstatic reviews. And while Soderlund defended the game against what he thinks are worse reviews than it deserved, he also acknowledged the series will have to get better in the future if it’s going to seriously compete against rival series like Call of Duty.

"Medal of Honor is to some extent judged harsher than it should be. The game is better than today’s reviews are indicating," Soderlund said. "What I can say is the game didn’t meet our quality expectations. In order to be successful in that space, we’re going to have to have a game that is really, really strong."

But Soderlund was also quick to make clear he and EA stand behind the series reboot completely. "I’m proud of what the game is and proud of what the team did. I just think the market is obviously telling us they think the game is X. We need to convince the market we can make something they appreciate more, particularly to be able to compete," he explained. "We’re looking at that clearly. We’re taking that seriously. I’m not at all saying Medal of Honor is a failure. It is a successful reboot of that franchise. We’re going to be strong in the future."

What Soderlund wouldn’t confirm, though, is whether Danger Close was already working on a follow-up, or whether EA might alternate with another development team the way Activision has done with Call of Duty the last few years. Danger Close is "absolutely working on something," Soderlund said, but he also made clear that developers would have more than eight months to work on games in the franchise -- which seems to mean that either a new team will indeed make the next entry if it’s releasing next year, or the next entry likely won’t be out until 2012.