Mass Effect 4 tentatively slated for "late 2014 to mid-2015" is "inaccurate" says EA [Update]

Apparently, the "late 2014 to mid-2015" date for Mass Effect 4 is "inaccurate," according to an EA spokesperson.

An EA spokesperson has told G4 that "at no time did EA or BioWare provide any answers to questions from Gamer Syndrome." The interview has since been removed as you can see here, along with the following message:

"The information provided previously by the author of this post was deemed to be obtained from an inaccurate source and NOT an official Bioware or EA interview response. We apologize for the inconvenience."

Things get even more tricky when you look at Eurogamer, which was our go-to source for this article:

"Eurogamer checked this out and EA confirmed the comments as belonging to Mass Effect 3 producer Mike Gamble. [UPDATE: The EA representative who organised the interview (and whom we previously spoke with) has now told Eurogamer that the speaker in fact wasn't Gamble, but another BioWare team member. We've asked again for information on the speaker's identity and will update when we hear back.]"

The original article as reported yesterday is below.

Mass Effect 3 producer Mike Gamble has told Gamer Syndrome that more on the next Mass Effect game will be revealed next year, and the current plan is to launch the game "late 2014 to mid-2015."

Gamble said an exact date couldn't be provided because "full development on the game [only] started a month or two ago."

The producer also said the team originally planned for multiplayer to be incorporated into Mass Effect 2, but once work started, they found it was going to be "too much."

"We had actually wanted to do multiplayer in Mass Effect 2," said Gamble. "We started working on it and found out that it was just going to be too much, so we had to take it out of Mass Effect 2 and put it into Mass Effect]. As far as the style it had, like I said we wanted it to be different from other games. It needed to have something that drew people into playing multiplayer over and over again. It had to be something that looked and felt like playing a mission in Mass Effect, except you had 3 other players from around the world with you.

"This style of multiplayer was something we wanted to do since Mass Effect 2. Regardless on how people felt about the ending of Mass Effect 3, alot of people still play multiplayer.

Gamble also said a mission idea for Mass Effect 3 which was scrapped saw players going to the Turian home world of Palaven.

"One of the mission ideas that got scrapped was actually going onto Palaven, the Turian home world, and being able to see what their world was like," he said. "We also scrapped the original ending for Mass Effect 3. We were gonna have it as a “boss battle”, where Commander Shepard would go up and fight The Illusive Man who has been transformed by The Reapers. We scrapped that idea because way too many [games] have that as their ending, some final boss fight.

"Ultimately, we are proud of the finished products in the Mass Effect series and stand by them."

Gamble also said there are more plans for Wii U at the studio but there was nothing more to announce at this time.

"We have a terrific company in Australia [Straight Right] who did a good job putting Mass Effect 3 on Wii U,: he said. "Again, I can’t really comment on rumored speculation about the game or the franchise. Wii U is a console we feel is really cool and that more Mass Effect would look great on it, so we do have plans for Wii U but nothing to announce at this moment."

Thanks, Eurogamer.