Deus Ex 3 Confirmed

Gamasutra is reporting that Eidos general manager Stéphane D’Astous has confirmed development of a third Deus Ex title at their new Montreal studio.

According to D’Astous, Eidos Montreal currently has two groups — a Q&A group that is responsible for testing all of the developer’s games from anywhere in the world, and an in-house development team that D’Astous says has just passed proof of concept for Deus Ex 3.

“This game was very highly rated at its release in 2000, and we have this great huge mandate to do the third one, and everybody is very excited,” added D’Astous.

So how many developers will be working on the game? According to D’Astous, teams will stay small and dev cycles will be lengthier. He stressed, “We’re only working on AAA, major titles. We’re going to be developing only major AAA games, using only next-gen technology.”

Therefore, he continued, “We will want to limit our dev teams to a human-sized team of 80 people at the very highest of the peak in the production cycle. We don’t want to become a huge studio where there’s over 100 people on a title. We want a smaller, multi-discipline group that are tightly knit together. But by doing so, we will give them at least 18 to 24 months for the production cycle.”

D’Astous believes that attitude will be appreciated on the local development scene and in the industry as a whole: “That’s music to a lot of ears over here,” he said. “Some developers are really trying to push titles out the door within 12-15 months; we’re working on plans for our first few titles that will only be released after 24 months.”

Let’s hope it follows in the same brilliant footsteps as the first one.