Today, Lucasfilm Games and Ubisoft Massive announced the two companies are working together on a new open-world, story-driven Star Wars game, and have started a “long-term collaboration”. But what does this mean for EA’s multi-year licensing deal on Star Wars games? According to EA, the company will still work with Lucasfilm Games on Star Wars projects “for years to come”.
EA released a statement about its future with the Star Wars brand following today’s news that Ubisoft will be working on a brand new Star Wars game with the newly formed Lucasfilm Games.
“We are proud of our long-standing collaboration with Lucasfilm Games, which will continue for years to come,” EA said in a statement. “Our talented teams have created some of the most successful games in the history of the Star Wars franchise, including Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, Star Wars: Battlefront, Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes and Star Wars: Squadrons. We love Star Wars and look forward to creating more exciting experiences for players to enjoy.”
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Earlier today, Lucasfilm Games made clear that it would continue to work with EA, and said that there were “a number of projects underway with the talented teams at EA”. One of those projects is presumably a sequel to Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, after EA made clear that the first game was intended as the start of a new franchise.
In 2013, EA and Star Wars agreed to a multi-year deal which gave EA the exclusive rights to publish core Star Wars video games developed by its internal studios. No comment has been given on how or when that deal was altered.
Earlier this week, Disney announced the formation of Lucasfilm Games, which will house all Star Wars games under a single banner. It subsequently announced that MachineGames and Bethesda are working on an Indiana Jones game under the Lucasfilm Games brand, too.
With a new game in development at Ubisoft, it appears that Lucasfilm Games will now work with a variety of developers and publishers on creating new Star Wars games and more – seemingly closer in approach to the Marvel Games brand.
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The EA partnership led to several games including Star Wars: Battlefront 1 and 2 from DICE, Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order from Respawn, and Star Wars: Squadrons from EA Motive. There were also cancelled projects that never materialized, including Amy Hennig’s Project Ragtag which was in development at the now shuttered Visceral Games.
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Matt T.M. Kim is a reporter for IGN.