Disney closes LucasArts, Star Wars 1313 cancelled

[Dasquian Belargic]

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2013/04/03/disney-closes-game-publisher-lucasarts.aspx

:( a sad day.

[Zereth Lancer]

Oh wow. I was very much looking forward to a current gen starwars game. I guess that's out of the picture not. On the plus side this might lead to Disney bringing in a better suited team to build Starwars games from here on out. It could lead to better games, seeing as LucasArts hasn't exactly been successful with their games over the last few years. I don't think I've been deeply invested into a Starwars title since the Jedi Knight trilogy.

Here's hoping to leads to something positive.

[Satkia Beltrak]

I'm not surprised, after all the whispers that have been caught for the past few months, but it's still a sad day.

[Dasquian Belargic]

I read somewhere that they want to focus on casual gaming :(

[Zereth Lancer]

If they are looking to turn a profit in comparison, they might shoot for the new craze of the free to play with micro transactions model. Where that would lead could be anyone's guess. There are a lot of things that are "In" right now; like MOBAs, action-adventure games (like Tomb Raider) and grindtastic leveling/unlocking first person shooters (Call of Duty, Battlefield). I read casual games as kid games, which I think is a terrible thing to do with the license.

If they rebooted the Battlefront 3 project that would be amazing. Especially if they made something that was on the scale of the current Battlefield series. 64+ players, tons of vehicles, unlock and leveling systems. It would be great. I don't know what the status of the license is. It could be locked down with the previous Battlefront developer.

With any projects only JUST starting, it means we won't even see a Starwars game for something like 3-5 years and would then be next gen. 1313 looked like it would have been fun even if just because it was breaking relatively unbroken ground with the whole third person shooter in the bowels of Coruscant approach.

[Jedi Master Carr]

I think there will still be Star Wars games but now at different companies like BioWare, EA, and others. They just don't want to make them anymore, and I think this is part of the Disney merger. Disney has never made games and have always sold those rights to others.

[Crusader]

I think this could actually be good news since this means that Disney might sell the rights for Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, Sam&Max and Grim Fandango to companies like Double Fine or Telltale Games.

Who are we kidding here the people of the golden Lucas Arts Era are long gone.

But maybe the franchises of that time might get the chance to live on in the hands of the people who made these games 20 years ago.

[Captain Untouchable]

I'm really disappointed by this - I had my fingers firmly crossed for LucasArts spreading into other Disney-owned properties.

It may have been a while since LucasArts produced a game that was truly epic, but I was still hoping that they might at the very least get to give a Marvel/Avengers game a go. Marvel characters have spent so long in piss-poor movie tie-in games that even a bad LucasArts game would have been better than nothing.

The future for Star Wars games seems pretty bleak. After the mediocre performance of SW:TOR, I doubt Bioware will want to do another Star Wars title any time soon, and most of the other really good studios seem to be focusing on creating original scifi-epic stories instead of new instalments for existing IPs.

Is the inevitable LEGO Star Wars IV: The New Trilogy the only Star Wars game we're going to get any time soon? :(

[Crusader]

Disney and Marvel have a poor track record at handling video games so calling this a surprise is far away from the truth. Movie Tie-In Games for the new SW movies will most likely not exceed the quality of the last Pirates of the Caribean or Iron Man game so those games will still be better than The Phantom Menace game...

[Captain Untouchable]

I don't think anyone is surprised by this move: like you say, Disney doesn't do games. It's just a shame, because LucasArts gave them an opportunity to change that and they decided not to take advantage of it.

[Crusader]

Hey even Lucas Arts handled its own IP in a horrible fashion. The last really good SW license game was Battlefront 2 and that game's success still makes me question the sanity of gamers. I think KOTOR1 was the last really good game that earned critical acclaim and sold well (Sorry Chris Avellone, I like you but your games are too buggy for being considered A-Rated).

SW:TOR was kind of DOA because of the payment system, the gameplay mechanics and graphics. This game would have been awesome 3-5 years ago.

[Jedi Master Carr]

Their last big game was really the Star Wars Lego games, but I think they have just licensed those out. I am sure we will continue to see more of those, and there will be other games.

[Dasquian Belargic]

I think this could actually be good news since this means that Disney might sell the rights for Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, Sam&Max and Grim Fandango to companies like Double Fine or Telltale Games.


Now *that* would be excellent.

[Yog]

I think this could actually be good news since this means that Disney might sell the rights for Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, Sam&Max and Grim Fandango to companies like Double Fine or Telltale Games.
Agreed. I think Disney will basically license the franchises to studios such as BioWare and Telltale Games, who is more likely to produce a quality end product than LucasArts themselves.

From the announcement:

After evaluating our position in the games market, we've decided to shift LucasArts from an internal development to a licensing model