LucasArts is no more. All staff were laid off, and development on all projects has been cancelled. All future Star Wars games will be licensed to external developers, and the LucasArts name will be used to license those titles. Star Wars 1313 and First assault will likely never be released, according to Kotaku's source, which is a shame, because they both looked like very promising games. A very, very sad day. The death of LucasArts is yet another casualty since Disney acquired LucasFilm. What do you think of Disney's management of their new property? http://kotaku.com/disney-shuts-down-lucasarts-468473749
EA hasn't gone to this level though. They've acquired studios, only to shut them down- which does suck, but not entire companies, and projects which were either finished or about to be finished, and in the works for years.
Agreed. I have fond memories of Loom and a bunch of other LucasArts adventures. Hell, Jedi Outcast is still one of my favorite action games ever, up there with Max Payne. Then again, it's been many years since LucasArts released a worthwhile game. The new SW game looked amazing, and perhaps it would have made for a comeback, but I'm sure that it was also a huge financial gamble. Business-wise it makes sense to allocate resources towards something tha more of a sure bet like Disney Infinity. Not sure if this is a "Disney sucks" story.
Yeah I agree its a shame considering their long history. That said by opening the door to 3rd parties hopefully we can see a few more quality attempts to capture the Star Wars magic. With the output LucasArts has had in the last 5 years I wouldn't be surprised if Disney has decided to clean house and re start the direction of digital avenues for the franchise.
It could happen still. Just means that an external company is going to have to develop it as a licensed game. It isn't clear whether they'll publish games themselves, and license the Star Wars IP to developers, or if they'll just license the IP to a publisher and have them publish whatever game(s) they make.
Seriously ? The first Rogue Squadron ? Dark Forces ? All the point n click games, they did do a fair few good uns Whats a shame is these old games could now be sat there gathering dust forever after, the second someone tries to release a port of it Disney will obviously stop it, just a shame these games will just gather dust. Hope i'm wrong and they re-release some old classics on iOS as they would work very well, but i reckon they'll just totally disappear forever
LucasArts did some decent point n' click games (although it's not my genre at all), I was really just talking about great Star Wars games. I mean come on, they're called LucasArts, it's like the "You had ONE job!" meme could be applied quite appropriately to them.
Battlefront, Star Wars : Empire at war, Jedi Knight : Jedi academy, Rogue Squadron ( on N64 and Gamecube ) are my favourites ones. Well at least there is high chance of all older LucasArts games being released on iOS market now.I would give everything for Star Wars : Battlefront with multiplayer on iOS devices
Okay, so the way that this sounds is that they are no longer developing games internally, but they will publish games using the LucasArts name for licensing. Games like KotOR, SWtOR, Battlefront, Jedi Knight II... All of those were developed externally, and just published by LucasArts. So, we may still get good 'Lucas' games.
You know, now that I've had some time to think about it... Disney isn't stupid. They like money just as much as anyone. I'm sure there was a good enough reason to split up an entire development team.
