It’s been a rough week for EA and Star Wars. The news broke earlier this week than the open-world Star Wars title, which the publisher had in development at its Vancouver studio, was canceled without being announced. This in itself was meant to be the rebooted version of the action-adventure that Dead Space creators Visceral Games had in production, which was also canceled. EA currently only has one game, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, on the way, but in a statement released today the publisher assures fans that it is “committed” to making new Star Wars games.
The statement appeared on Kotaku, as an update to the site’s earlier report about the EA Vancouver open-world title being canceled. While EA would not confirm or deny any game cancellations (the project hadn’t been officially announced anyway) the statement simply notes that “as a natural part of the creative process, the great work by our team in Vancouver continues and will evolve into future Star Wars content and games.” This does at least confirm that the studio will remain open, and may even be working on a “smaller” Star Wars title for 2020.
The publisher also assures fans that it’s “fully committed to making more Star Wars games” and are “very excited about Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order from Respawn.” EA also states that it will “share more about our new projects when the time is right.” As the publisher is now six years into its 10-year deal with Disney for the exclusive Star Wars PC and console gaming license, there’s not much time left for them to announce and release more games.
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is currently the only game EA has announced, and that currently doesn’t even have a logo. It was rather casually revealed at EA’s E3 2018 conference through a quick interview with Respawn’s studio head Vince Zampella, and the game will be set during “the Dark Times” between Episodes III-IV. It’s rumored to be out this year, possibly in place of a Battlefront/Battlefield game around October or November. We’ll have to wait and see, both for Fallen Order and to find out whether EA are indeed “committed” to making Star Wars games.
