DarkRula wrote:Then has all interest for developing for the Star Wars licence been lost? Have they already lost the licence but nothing is being said on that until 2020? Aside from Ultracore - which they only finished up working on from back when it was Hardcore - they've been supporting both Battlefront II and Battlefield V with new content. But that's just supporting. I doubt all employees there are currently occupied on supporting either of those games. So there's got to be something coming. And if they were still currently supporting both current games, they wouldn't say anything about future releases.
There is no shortage of interest in developing for the SW license, honestly. I think a lot of studios would leap at the chance to contribute to the new Star Wars canon.
It is very likely that the several early scandals of BF2, and Disney's subsequent rare intervention have, let's say, severely jeopardised EA's future of handling the IP. It's plausible in this scenario that EA would want to prove its worth to Disney by supporting the troubled game with much more content than it would usually dedicate to a scandal-plagued financial failure, hoping to restore its reputation and thereby renew its license.
I don't know how large DICE is (500+ people?), but I do know that the Battlefront II team is around 100 strong, and has actually added a couple of developers to the ranks these last few months.
I also know that one of the senior devs, maybe the Community Manager, Ben Walke, has stated that Battlefront 3 is effectively not in any stage of development right now. And he would be in a position to know.
I feel like they're waiting to see how license negotiations turn out before they dedicate real resources to a game that, as of right now, may not be made. I also think that they could be helping develop a next gen Frostbite engine or Battlefield game.
DarkRula wrote:Maybe I'm completely wrong and they've sidelined Battlefront to bring the reputation of Battlefield up first. Maybe I'm still just a bit sour that they've had this licence for five years and have only given us two Battlefronts. Here's to hoping Jedi: Fallen Order marks a resurgence of Star Wars gaming, with a new one coming every year.
It's a precious, highly coveted license, which I guess means that any product released under its name has to be spot on perfect. That's why 1313 etc were canned - for straight up not being good enough.
I want Respawn to do a Republic Commando sequel while another dev updates the original title. An Uncharted style game about Doctor Aphra would be cool, too.