Alien: Isolation 2 rumour isn't true

Creative Assembly is not currently working on an Alien: Isolation sequel, Eurogamer understands.

The rumour, which began with the latest edition of Official PlayStation Magazine (via PlayStation Universe), has since been picked up by a number of other publications and spawned a Reddit thread with more than 600 upvotes, as well as a discussion on gaming forum NeoGAF.

"Our sources tell us that after work is finished on Halo Wars 2," said OPM, "a new Alien game may start development over at Alien Isolation dev Creative Assembly."

Eurogamer's own sources have told us this isn't the case. Although the Halo Wars 2 team has already started prototyping its next project, likely to be a couple of years away from completion, this won't be an Alien title.

More than that, we're told the majority of the Alien: Isolation design team no longer works at Creative Assembly. Cross-referencing the more recent Halo Wars 2 credits with the credits for Alien: Isolation certainly suggests this is the case. In fact, most of the names that do reappear only do so in the 'Special Thanks' section and belong to designers that now work elsewhere.

Alien: Isolation may have been a critical hit, but with somewhere around two million lifetime sales (many sold at a discounted price), it was not seen as a huge commercial success by publisher Sega.

"Alien: Isolation 2 is not out of the question," Creative Assembly studio director Tim Heaton told GamesIndustry.biz in late 2015, "because we're so proud of it and there's possibly more to be said. But do we really want to be spending very significant amounts of money, and getting close to break-even or just about in the black? That's not where Sega wants to be, when we have a brilliant portfolio of other games that do great business."

"Currently the studio is fully focused on the development of Total War: Warhammer 2 and other as yet unannounced projects," Sega told Eurogamer when asked for comment. As we already know, those unannounced projects include a new historical Total War title.

We also contacted Official PlayStation Magazine this morning, asking for clarification on its original rumour.

"We can't talk in any more detail about aspects of the Rumour Machine section of the magazine," said editor Ian Dean.