Say goodbye to EA Redwood Shores. The once dryly named studio most recently responsible for Dead Space and the upcoming Dante's Inferno and Dead Space: Extraction has a new, slightly more extreme name: Visceral Games.
Sound familiar? That's the trademark aimed squarely at the gut that Electronic Arts filed for in March, leading to some extremely unexciting speculation. Visceral Games general manager Glen Schofield says that the new identity better reflects the studio's "new set of development principles and game design values."
"We make intense, top quality games that push the boundaries of action entertainment," Schofield writes on the new Visceral Games web site. "The name change represents who we are and what we believe games should be. Dead Space, Dead Space: Extraction, Dante's Inferno and other concepts in the pipeline illustrate where the studio's expertise and passion lay."
For anyone who thinks that the former Redwood Shores folks are abandoning their past, read the next sentence.
"We are not abandoning our past but embracing the future," Schofield says, addressing the legions of fans who will obviously prefer the location-based former name of the studio. "With an obsessive focus on excellence and a relentless commitment to intense action, Visceral Games is set to execute all future games at the quality, innovation and polish of Dead Space."
If nothing else, the Visceral Games announcement shows the first use of an x-rayed skull in an EA logo. And that's... well, still relatively minor in the grand scheme of things.
Visceral Games [Official Site]