If the rumors are true, it appears that Electronic Arts has worn out its welcome when it comes to Star Wars. Rumors are starting to circulate that Disney and Lucasfilm Limited are looking at new Star Wars developers besides EA to develop more games for the franchise in the future.
EA has been the subject of a good deal of controversy when it comes to the past few years and the Star Wars games that they’ve made or been making. Whether it’s the original Battlefront (which turned out to be a disappointment when it had very few planets and maps) or Battlefront 2 (which gained so much negative press over its microtransaction model that Disney called the studio and forced them to remove the microtransactions on the night of release), it seems EA is mangling everything they’ve been entrusted with.
Back in 2013 EA managed to snag exclusive rights to develop Star Wars games, which in the hands of any other, competent and PR-friendly developer, would have been a goldmine. However, it seems that EA mangling two games that should have been goldmines, and cancelling another game in order to make it an open-world “games as service” model and killing a studio alongside it, Disney and Lucasfilm are having second thoughts.
Disney has since pulled EA to the side to talk about their efforts, and have also approached Ubisoft and Activision about the possibility of being new Star Wars developers. There’s no telling how this will actually turn out, but for the sake of Star Wars games, hopefully Disney will take away EA’s exclusivity rights so that Star Wars games can go to developers who are much more likely to actually treat the franchise with respect.
With Visceral’s Star Wars game now cancelled it seems like we won’t get a Star Wars game in 2018, so in the meantime gamers can hope and prey that soon we’ll get Ubisoft and Activision as new Star Wars developers in the future.
