Matt Martin 07:42 (BST)
01/10/2008

Electronic Arts has cancelled the forthcoming shooter Tiberium and let a number of staff working on the project go.

The company cites quality issues as the reason behind the cancellation.

"EA has suspended work on Tiberium effective immediately," said EA's Mariam Sughayer in an official statement.

"The game was not on track to meet the high quality standards set by the team and by the EA Games Label. A lower quality game is not in the best interest of the consumers and would not succeed in this market.

"This decision will result in some individuals being released. However, EA will make every effort to place talented people on other projects. Eligible employees will receive severance and outplacement support," detailed the company.

An internal memo reprinted by Kotaku reveals that EA LA's Mike Verdu, along with Nick Earl and Frank Gibeau at EA Games took the decision to halt the project.

"The game had fundamental design challenges from the start. We fought to correct the issues, but we were not successful; the game just isn't coming together well enough to meet our own quality expectations as well as those of our consumers," reads the memo.

"Moving forward, we need to make sure this doesn't happen again. I believe we are already doing a better job of engineering success in from the start. The quality bar has been raised. Now we need to step up our focus on great design and execution, catching any problems early and correcting them quickly."

The spin-off from the Command & Conquer franchise was originally announced back in December last year, and at the time EA said the title had been in pre-production for two years.

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