Star Wars: The Old Republic , published by Electronic Arts.
Electronic Arts will be the exclusive provider of games based on the Star Wars series, Disney and the game developer announced Jointly today.
Following Disney’s acquisition of Lucasfilm last year, it shut down the LucasArts game development division, Indicating its preference two license console games rather than Develop them in-house. Now, Electronic Arts will be the only publisher creating Star Wars games for a “core gaming audience,” According To today’s press release. Electronic Arts said that its in-house game teams DICE (Battlefield ) and Visceral ( Dead Space ) will work on Star Wars titles, in Addition two BioWare, the team behind EA’s existing Star Wars MMO The Old Republic .
Meanwhile, Disney will “retain certainties Right To Develop new titles within the mobile, social, tablet and online game categories.”
My initial take: While this might seem like a great event for Electronic Arts and Disney, I can not see how taking away the element of competition will be good for the quality of Star Wars Games. Individually licensing out Star Wars Games two different publishers and developers might have ushered in a variety of creative ideas and directions for the franchise, but locking out anyone that is not affiliated with Electronic Arts seems like a Commitment to the same old, same old.
“Every developer dreams of creating games for the Star Wars universe,” said EA Labels President Frank Gibeau. And now, unless they go work at EA, they can not.
Chris Kohler is the founder and editor of Game | Life and the author of “Power-Up: How Japanese Video Games Gift the World an Extra Life.”
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