GameGuide » Blog Archive » EA: Annual Releases Ruined Medal of Honor

Though the last few entries in the series have proven disappointing, the Medal of Honor franchise once stood as one of the top first-person shooters out there. So what went wrong? Gamasutra sat down with EA Games president Frank Gibeau, who shared his thoughts on the series’ failures, as well as what he hopes to correct with this year’s game.

“I think any franchise that’s been around for a long time, they get in a rut, they become over-annualized. They run out of innovation,” explained the EA exec. “The team pounds on a game every year, and they get tired, they run out of time and effort to be innovative and try and take some new risks. That was my view on how the franchise has fallen.”

Gibeau doesn’t pin the blame solely on yearly sequels, however. “I also felt like the online component wasn’t getting enough attention,” Gibeau confessed. “Any shooter worth its salt is going to be really breakthrough in its online play, and I think Battlefield: Bad Company is a good example of that, I think Modern Warfare 2 is a good example of that, I think Halo clearly is a good example of that. The power of a franchise in the shooter category is in the online component and modes.” -1up