EA the New Emperor in the Star Wars Game Verse

Last month, we learned that Disney was pulling the plug on LucasArts, and today, we finally learn where Disney has settled its Star Wars game franchise: EA. According to a press release given by EA, the company will be handling all of the development and publishing of Star Wars games on PC, console and handhelds. Disney will however retain many rights to the mobile, social, tablet and online game categories.

EA Labels President Frank Gibeau had this to say: “Every developer dreams of creating games for the Star Wars universe. Three of our top studios will fulfill that dream, crafting epic adventures for Star Wars fans. DICE and Visceral will produce new games, joining the BioWare team which continues to develop for the Star Wars franchise. The new experiences we create may borrow from films, but the games will be entirely original with all new stories and gameplay.”

The whole reason Disney shut down LucasArts was because it wanted to move to a licensing model to minimize financial loss and expand its Star Wars games catalog; this is certainly a best case scenario for Disney. EA has had its hands on a few Star Wars titles, thanks to Bioware, but it doesn’t mean that there is much confidence in EA to maintain the quality of games we’ve come to expect from LucasArts.

This announcement did not shed light into the matter of  the recently canceled Star Wars 1313 rising from the ashes of LucasArts’ grave or what new games would be coming down the pipe. There is time enough for that; just don’t be surprised to see a few new game announcements when Disney releases more information about the new Star Wars movies.