The future of Star Wars games belongs to EA

[nsane.forums]

Exclusive deal will lead to titles developed by Bioware, Visceral, and DICE.

Disney and Electronic Arts today announced a multi-year licensing agreement that will give the game publisher exclusive rights to make titles based on the Star Wars universe, including the upcoming films. While Disney will retain the rights to games in the "mobile, social, tablet and online game categories," EA will be the only publisher publishing "new Star Wars titles for a core gaming audience, spanning all interactive platforms and the most popular game genres."

The sudden announcement was light on details, including any financial relationship between the companies. EA did say that Knights of the Old Republic developer Bioware, Battlefield developer DICE, and Dead Space developer Visceral would all be working on Star Wars games under the agreement.

It seems like an odd move on the surface, since Disney has its own game publishing arm that could theoretically benefit from last year's $4 billion purchase of Lucasfilm and the Star Wars license. Still, the move isn't so surprising considering that Disney decided to shutter long-lived game studio LucasArts last month, and the company canceled work on cinematic shooter Star Wars 1313.

It's not like Disney CEO Bob Iger didn't telegraph the move either. During the Lucasfilm acquisition, he said that Disney was "likely to focus more on social and mobile than we are on console" and that "we'll look opportunistically at console, most likely in licensing rather than publishing."

EA has a long history developing and publishing Star Wars titles including Bioware's massively multiplayer game The Old Republic, which has struggled to retain subscribers since its launch in late 2011.

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[DKT27]

Comment on OA:

I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if the fictional setting that defined my childhood was suddenly entrusted to my least favorite gaming company