In 2012, Electronic Arts released BioWare's third entry in the Mass Effect series on the Wii U. While we've not seen Commander Shepard appear on a Nintendo platform since then, there were apparently plans prior to this for a spin-off on the Nintendo DS.
Ex-BioWare producer, Mark Darrah, revealed a lot of juicy information about the project titled Mass Effect: Corsair during a chat with the YouTube channel MinnMax (thanks, IGN). The same team was also responsible for Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood.
“It was going to be a DS game, it was going to be first-person, you’d fly around a ship...We were going to put it out in a part of the galaxy that was more pirate-y and not really fully explored."
“It was going to kinda be a combination of Privateer and Star Control...You would be independent, you’d be more like a Han Solo character, not a Spectre. And you’d be flying around, picking up cargo, exploring, and sell that information back to the human Alliance.”
The team got as far as the early phases of the flight control system, which it worked on while trying to decide how the game would fit into the universe of Mass Effect:
“Pretty much all we had was the beginnings of the flight controls, we didn’t have the rest of that game put together...We were figuring out how it worked from an IP perspective, still.”
In the end, the main roadblock was the pricing of DS cartridges. For Mass Effect: Corsair, BioWare would have been required to pay around $10.50 for each game card - with DS games retailing at the time for $30.
This would have resulted in very little return for the development and localisation costs, and EA predicted the game was only going to sell about 50,000 copies, according to Darrah.
While this DS release never saw the light of day, part of the team eventually swapped over to mobile development and released Mass Effect Infiltrator.
Would you have been interested in playing a Mass Effect game on the Nintendo DS? How about a Mass Effect game on Switch? Leave your thoughts down below.
Comments 33
Wouldn't be too late to actually go back, finish this, and get it out for Switch.
You had me at Star Control
Only 50,000? Seriously?
But then we remember Sonic Dark Brotherhood, sharing its engine and dev team with Mass Effect Galaxy, and breathe a collective sign of relief.
Masstroid Prime.
50,000 copies sold on one of the most successful game platforms in history?
EA must have expected that game to be absolutely atrocious.
Yet here we are waiting for the classic trilogy collection that would probably outsell any other system. EA missing out again.
It’s been so long since the last DS article that I’m trying to rack my brains to work out if this insane shade of lime green is a new thing or I’ve just blocked it from my memory 😂
@Nutsalad
Switch owners don’t care about this damaged goods of a franchise.
Who says the game is actually only **really** going to sell 50,000 copies..? Do I smell coporate trying to just shelve the game just because it might prove to be a little challenging to market to what now looks to have evolved into a niche community (DS) or am I in error?
Mass Effect game definitely for the Switch yes.
If Sonic Chronicles is anything to go by, then I'm glad it didn't happen.
That would have been so interesting
$10.50? I find that very hard to believe unless they were going to use 256MB or 512MB cartridges (the latter I believe was the largest for a DS game).
Good for them anyway as the excellent Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars was unfortunately a massive flop, and a Mass Effect game on the DS would have been even more so.
Someone at EA really, really hates Nintendo.
Prolly some dudebro with backwards baseball cap and lip beard at every EA board meeting going “Nah, dude! Nintendo’s for Kid’s!” then he presses play on his iPod, kicks back and listens to some Sugar Ray whilst lubing up his Xbox duke controller.
But somehow, ME3 on the then new Wii U without the previous entries around the same price and time as the release of the trilogy on other platforms got a green light. And was probably later used as an excuse why their games "don't sell on Nintendo platforms", and slapping football fans and Switch players in the face. I'm not even a football fan, and not easily insulted, but I almost feel insulted in their stead. But most of all, they publicly insult themselves at this point. Self-sabotage and then blaming their failure on those who gave up on them after years of self-sabotaging. And STILL no shame for squeezing every last cent out of the people that still don't hate them, using even more deceitful and manipulative methods and blatantly lying about it. A fine example of capitalism at work here.
Sonic Chronicles is one of the cheapest-looking Sonic games I've played, though, I have to give it credit for at least trying something new with the Chao. I like that it loosely connects to the GBA games too, something you wouldn't see nowadays.
It’s still kinda baffling to me that Switch didn’t get the recent Mass Effect trilogy. But I felt that way about the Burnout Paradise remaster and that did, eventually, make its way over so who even knows at this point. EA clearly aren’t in any rush to give Switch players day-and-date versions of their games.
@Ghost_of_Hasashi It might seem that way, but for code that hasn't been touched in over 10 years, assuming it can even be accessed, it was still not made far in at all and was made for a different market with a device with 2 different screens. This game is dead and buried. Dread only got revived because of a whole new team who did something with the concept; I have high doubt EA would go back to this thing ever again given their current history on the Switch.
I'd have bought it. I got the Mech assault game and had no regrets. Projecting 50,000 sales on a system that sold over 100,000,000 is pretty ignorant. They could have also tooled it for a wii version or PSP version if they weren't confident etc.
@FargusPelagius I have a feeling EA wouldn't have bothered to advertise it.
@Nutsalad Since when do Switch ports outsell PS4/X1 versions?
Considering the Bioware game we did get one the DS... I think it's best if Mass Effect stayed away from the DS.
Hey, hey Bioware? Yeah, if you port the Mass Effect Trilogy to Switch with all the DLC included, I will buy day 1! All you gotta do is port it. I don't need it to be remastered. A simple port is more than good enough.
I am even fine with digital only. Just do it!
Yo lo habría comprado.
50,000 copies of a Mass Effect spin-off on DS? Maybe in it’s first week.
@WallyWest It was happening with regularity in the indie space, but no AA/AAA franchises I can think of outside maybe Dragon Quest.
@Spiders Yeah i can imagine Indies do, i myself prefer to play Indies on the Switch and i imagine many others do. Can't think any AAA games selling better on Switch, in fact there's very few AAA games what are on all 3 systems and many of the ones on Switch are ports what came later like The Witcher 3 or Doom Eternal.
I've never played Mass Effect but this sounds like it could have been good. I miss when Nintendo handhelds got exclusive games in major third-party franchises. There haven't been too many of those on the Switch other than Monster Hunter.
$10.50 for a cartridge? Does that include the plastic case? No wonder companies prefer digital. I wonder how much a Switch cartridge costs?
@ballistic90 They simply didn't want to make/sell it in the first place. The £10.50 cart cost comes from a low production run of 50,000 units. A higher sales forecast would have lowered the cost per cart, but left EA in a position where it "would" have to advertise to get better sales. Defeating the point of a bigger run.
Typical catch 22 of game development where someone has no faith in their own products/IP.
They can still do this.
This would have been quite an interesting curio to see on the DS, would've loved to pick this up for blasphemous prices on Ebay after remembering its existence years later.
So glad this didn't happen. No need to dilute a great brand with an average game, just for a few more pennies.
We've seen it with other formerly great franchises that have tainted their reputation over time with cash-in releases. In the end the brand and games suffer.
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