Star Wars is a pretty big deal. The video games based on the classic franchise is an even bigger deal. Some of the best video games ever made have come from the franchise, and now Disney has signed a deal to put Star Wars in the hands of EA.
As per the terms of the deal, all of the core titles in the Star Wars universe will be made and published by EA. The publisher said that it has three of its top development houses – DICE, Bioware and Visceral – all working on Star Wars games now. There have been no specific announcements, but people are already speculating what we might see from these developers.
Gamers seem to be especially excited at the prospect of a DICE-developed Star Wars game. DICE is best known as the developers of the excellent Battlefield franchise, and some see their involvement as a sign that Star Wars: Battlefront III could soon be a reality.
Making a new Battlefront game wouldn’t actually be all that difficult as Free Radical was working on a new entry in the series before they went bankrupt and became Crytek UK. Disney probably still owns the assets created by Free Radical and DICE could use those assets as a jumping off point for its own Battlefront game. To get a taste of what Battlefront III may look like, here’s some leaked alpha footage courtesy of Reddit:
BF3 alphaNov from Blue_Monkey on Vimeo.
As for Bioware, its Star Wars games could go anywhere. Some are hoping that Bioware will make a new Knights of the Old Republic game, but others feel that the studio may make a Star Wars game more in line with its recent Mass Effect series. Either way, fans are pretty happy that Star Wars will be going back to the main Bioware studio after many felt that Bioware Austin botched The Old Republic MMO.
Visceral is the wild card of the bunch as the studio is most well known for the Dead Space franchise. It’s hard to imagine that the studio would make a horror-themed Star Wars game, let alone an M-rated Star Wars game. The studio does have some experience in making action games, however, so it’s possible that we could get a third person action game in the vein of the classic Jedi Knight series.
With all this speculation, fans are understandably torn over whether EA was a good choice to sign a deal with. The reactions on Twitter say just as much:
There are very, very few studios that can handle a Star Wars game, EA have about 5 of them.
Hopefully EA combines their exclusivity deals and creates a Star Wars Football game. http://t.co/e5plmpNQaq
“The good news is, since no one can compete with us, Star Wars games don’t have to be good!” -EA (Not a real quote)
EA are in control of any future Star Wars game…if you need me I’ll be finding a noose and stepladder
EA will be publishing future Star Wars games. So we could be getting battlefront 3, but as it’s EA we’ll have to buy half of it as dlc.
The negative reaction to EA holding Star Wars rights is frustrating since people are just ignoring that EA are putting great teams on it.
Disney gave EA the duty to create Star Wars games. Well, I hope you like always online DRM that doesn’t work at launch.
Star Wars was already kind of ruined by the prequels. Is it really a big deal if EA makes some Star Wars shovel-wear? Lucas did it first.