Lucasfilm Games have announced they are working with Ubisoft on a new story-driven, open world Star Wars game.
The announcement continues from their earlier announcement that Lucasfilm Games would once again become “the official identity for all gaming titles from Lucasfilm.” The new announcement states that they are now seeking more developers to work on Star Wars games.
“We’re looking to work with best-in-class teams that can make great games across all of our IP,” Lucasfilm Games VP Douglas Reilly stated. “We’ve got a team of professionals here at Lucasfilm Games who can work with the developers, shape the stories, shape the creative, shape the games, to make them really resonate with fans and deliver across a breadth of platforms, genres, and experiences so that all of our fans can enjoy the IPs that they know and love.”
The first of these is Ubisoft, working with Lucasfilm Games on a story-driven, open world game. Specifically it is Ubisoft subsidiary Massive Entertainment, and will utilize the Snowdrop engine. Reilly had high praise for the team.
“We’re really excited about an opportunity to work with the team at Massive, led by David Polfeldt and the creative director, Julian Gerighty. We’ve spent almost a year now, working to get to know them and what they want to bring to the table. I’m a huge fan of them, personally. I think we’re really excited about where that project is going, because they have a unique vision for the story and the game they want to deliver.”
[…] “We know that fans of Star Wars value the feeling of immersion — of being transported into the Star Wars galaxy and moving through richly-detailed environments. It’s fun to imagine what the team at Massive can do within Star Wars by bringing their innovative spirit and their commitment to quality.”
The news is surprising, as Electronic Arts (EA) have the licence to Star Wars games. Then again, it may be hardly of any surprise to those who can remember back to 2017.
For those unfamiliar, Star Wars Battlefront II was plagued by lootboxes and micro-transactions giving those who paid a clear advantage. It was later discovered that unlocking everything would take around 4,500 hours, or $2100 in DLC and micro-transactions.
An EA Community Team representative of the Star Wars Battlefront subreddit “won” the Guinness World Record for the “Most Downvoted Reddit Comment” thanks to their response to the community.
While all in-game micro-transactions were later removed, the outcry was so great, it was one of the contributing factors to starting the debate by governments whether to ban or regulate lootboxes, and legal action against developers [1, 2, 3, 4] .
Nonetheless, the announcement post confirms that Lucasfilm Games will continue to work with EA. “We’re really proud of the games we have created with EA,” Reilly stated. “We will continue working with them and our relationship has never been stronger. While we may not have a lot of details to share at the moment, we’ve got a number of projects underway with the talented teams at EA.”
In earlier news; Lucasfilm Games, Bethesda, Machine Games, and Todd Howard are working on an Indiana Jones game.
