BioWare: Mass Effect 4 due "late 2014 to mid-2015"

UPDATE #2: EA has this evening informed Eurogamer that GamerSyndrome's information did not come from EA or BioWare at all. We separately contacted GamerSyndrome who told us that the information came from an "unreliable source" and that the site was investigating the matter.

UPDATE #1: The EA representative who organised the interview (and whom we previously spoke with) has 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.

ORIGINAL STORY: The next Mass Effect game is not due for at least another two years, developer BioWare has revealed.

A fourth major instalment in the sci-fi series was teased earlier this year after BioWare's two founders departed the studio.

"You'll hear more about the new Mass Effect game in 2013," BioWare told Gamer Syndrome.

In terms of a release window, it'll launch in "late 2014 to mid-2015"."I honestly can't tell you an exact [date] because full development on the game started a month or two ago," an anonymous BioWare team member was reported as saying.

Eurogamer checked this out and EA confirmed the comments as belonging to Mass Effect 3 producer Mike Gamble.

BioWare has canvassed fan opinion on the future of Mass Effect a couple of times before, most recently asking whether the fourth game should be a sequel or a prequel.

While Mass Effect fans wait, there's at least one more Mass Effect 3 DLC in the pipeline and ongoing multiplayer support promised.

Gamble revealed that a multiplayer mode was once in development for Mass Effect 2 until the project became too ambitious.

"We had actually wanted to do multiplayer in Mass Effect 2," he said. "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] 3."

Scrapped ideas for Mass Effect 3 included a mission to the turian homeworld Palaven (you visit its moon in the final version of the game) and a huge boss battle in place of the game's controversial conclusion.

"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," Gamble explained.

"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."

Gamble concluded by adding that BioWare was also being kept busy by Mass Effect plans on Wii U. Nintendo's new console received a version of Mass Effect 3 at its launch, but fans are waiting on a Wii U version of the recent Trilogy pack.

"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," he concluded.