There seems to be an impression amongst people that Dead Space under-performed. That such a fantastic game deserved "better" sales. I don't know. 1.4 million copies sold sounds pretty good to me.
The figure was disclosed by EA Redwood Shores' Visceral's Glen Schofield in an interview with GameSpot, and when you consider EA's other "under-performing" title from 2008 (Mirror's Edge) also sold over a million, well, the company's new, original titles aren't so much under-performing as simply performing.
EA Redwood Shores gets Visceral with two new games [GameSpot]