Star Wars Games Set to Explore Galaxies Unknown
For the first time since Disney purchased Lucas Films in 2012, a company other than EA is getting the opportunity to work on a Star Wars video game, ending EA’s 8 years of exclusivity with the franchise. The newly announced Lucasfilm Games told Wired that they will be working with Ubisoft on a brand new, open-world Star Wars game. This marks yet another major game announcement from the company this week, as they have also announced their partnership with Bethesda’s MachineGames Studio on a new Indiana Jones title.
The game will be worked on by Ubisoft’s Massive Entertainment, but don’t expect it to release anytime soon as the studio is still in the early stages of development, hiring some key players. Development will be led by Julian Gerighty, the director behind The Division 2 and The Crew, as he serves as the upcoming title’s creative director.
The game will also be made using Massive’s Snowdrop engine, but other than that, we don’t know much about the project. Hopefully later this year we will get a bit more information regarding the game’s setting, plot, and characters –considering how large the Star Wars universe is, there are a lot of directions the creative team can take this project.
As to what happened with EA’s exclusivity deal, we do not really know the full details as of yet. It was previously believed that EA’s contract to have exclusive rights to Star Wars games would last 10 years, however, we are only 8 years in. Regardless of whether or not the company has exclusive rights to the franchise, Sean Shoptaw, Senior Vice President of Global Games and Interactive Experiences at Disney, told WIRED:
“EA has been and will continue to be a very strategic and important partner for us now and going forward,”
So expect to see more EA Star Wars titles moving forward, as well as some new titles from other developers. In their 8-years of exclusivity, EA released a number of fantastic Star Wars titles including Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, Star Wars Battlefront II, and Star Wars Squadrons.