EA will be the sole developer of future Star Wars video games with the announcement of a new deal.
Following the closure of LucasArts (the video game development arm of Lucasfilm) in early April, new Star Wars owner Disney has awarded exclusive development rights for the property to Electronic Arts. EA in turn will utilise three of its best developers to produce these games.
First up there's BioWare, which already has experience making Star Wars games with Knights of the Old Republic. Then there's Volition, which this year saw its Dead Space sci-fi action franchise canned by EA.
Finally there's DICE, which has had enormous success with its Battlefield series of online shooters. Indeed, EA itself has revealed that DICE's own Frostbite 3 engine that will power all of the forthcoming Star Wars titles across all three of the studios.
So from now on, every core Star Wars game will have an EA badge on its box. Disney will retain the right to publish Star Wars games for smartphones, tablets, social platforms and online, however.
Speaking about the type of Star Wars games EA would create under this new multi-year deal in a press release, EA president Frank Gibeau revealed, "the new experiences we create may borrow from films, but the games will be entirely original with all new stories and gameplay.”
EA has already published a handful of Star Wars games, of course. Read our Star Wars: The Old Republic review to see how that's gone for them in the past.
