Lucasfilm Games Just Gave Star Wars Fans The Best News
A long time ago in a boardroom far, far away, Disney gave EA exclusive Star Wars video game publishing rights. Then, early in 2020, a new hope emerged: Lucasfilm Games. The company arrived to bring balance to the Star Wars video game world, and it worked fast.
Recently, Lucasfilm Games marked an end to EA's exclusivity deal. For nearly a decade, EA held the Star Wars license and launched a bunch of duds. Its biggest release, Star Wars: Battlefront 2, favored loot boxes over fun progression and buried EA (and microtransactions in general) under a mountain of allegations which compared loot boxes to illegal gambling. The company's latest Star Wars outings, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and Star Wars: Squadrons, were a return to form, but it was too little too late. Lucasfilm Games has decided to rekindle an elegant business model for a more civilized age.
According to Lucasfilm Games VP Douglas Reilly, the company is "opening the doors to developers," and virtually everyone is invited. Lucasfilm Games will work with a variety of teams to develop a similarly varied menu of Star Wars titles. The platforms and genres don't matter; the company will collaborate on the projects and shape them into Star Wars experiences audiences will "know and love." Lucasfilm Games has also revealed that Ubisoft is at the top of the list.
Reilly confirmed that Ubisoft has already started work on a new open-world Star Wars title. Not only have audiences longed for such an experience (according to Reilly), but the project is in good hands since it is under the command of Massive Entertainment. The studio previously helped bring Assassin's Creed: Revelations, Far Cry 3, and Tom Clancy's The Division 1 and 2 to life, so Massive is well-versed in the art of open-world video games.
Of course, since the collaboration offer is wide open, Lucasfilm Games hasn't shut the door on EA, which has numerous titles in development. Moreover, the Lucasfilm Games brand won't just apply to Star Wars games. MachineGames' upcoming Indiana Jones project also bears the mark of Lucasfilm. Reilly is eager to share more news about that title and Ubisoft's Star Wars game as they become available.
Reilly has big plans for Lucasfilm Games and hopes that 2021 shapes up to be a "very exciting year" for the company. With over 300 days to go in 2021, anything can happen, even a new E.T. game.