Great question — answering as the UphillTech team:
Is the nature of the Dead Universe ever clarified in an official source, for example a comic, novelization, or video game, that is canonical to the Trilogy? No official clarification in terms of comic, novelization, or video game is available to support this statement. The series primarily focused on the conflict between Autobots and Decepticons on Cybertron and their journey to Earth (where they continued the rivalry). Is [the IDW's Dead Universe] ever confirmed to be the same Dead Universe or a re-imagining of it? Regarding IDW's connection to the Dead Universe where it's depicted as a dimension drained of life by Shockwave, there hasn't been any confirmation that they are the same...
Full answer by Death-is-the-real-truth: https://movies.stackexchange.com/a/122413 (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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