Respawn boss says it's 'heavily invested in the Titanfall universe,' whatever that means

The sci-fi FPS Titanfall 2 was an outstanding game that, for various reasons, didn't sell particularly well. But it was "successful," according to an interview Respawn Entertainment CEO Vince Zampella gave to Gamespot, and the studio is "heavily invested" in the setting. But whether that means we'll see Titanfall 3 anytime soon is another question entirely. 

"The game was successful, it sold well, but it didn't quite sell as well as it should have. Maybe because it was super crowded, the pricing was aggressive—it was a rough window to launch our game," Zampella said. "But we've got a really great fanbase. There's not really much negativity or acidity compared to other communities, so I'm very thankful for that." 

"It's important for us to keep the franchise going. 'We're doing more Titanfall,' which is the quote I'm supposed to say. We have our franchise creative director, who's in charge of safeguarding the franchise in multiple formats and making sure it continues to grow. There's some other things we're doing that haven't been announced just yet, but we're heavily invested in the Titanfall universe." 

As statements go, that's pretty open-ended—and in fact the next game in the franchise is a mobile RTS called Titanfall: Assault, which is going into full release next week. Combined with Zampella's less-than-committed "supposed to say" comment, it sounds like a new Titanfall FPS is far from a certainty, at least in the short term. (Everything comes back eventually, after all.) 

To my reading, there's a very distinct echo here of Zampella's 2016 comment about staying committed to the franchise, "whatever the fuck that means." 

Zampella also touched on the recent release of Operation Frontier Shield, which included the new Frontier Defense mode, saying that the player count during its release was "like five times the numbers since the initial launch ... There's two or three times as many people playing Frontier Defense right now than all other multiplayer modes combined. That's very encouraging for us."

Over on the official Respawn Twitter account, they were even more specific with the figures:

Unfortunately, Frontier Defense will also probably be the last major content update for Titanfall 2, Zampella said. "We want to work on new stuff." For now, if you are one of those new or returning players, why not check out our guide to the best guns in the game.