Disney closes Lucasarts.

[Darth Yan]

The force unleashed games were fun, but not up to kotor 1. I'm curious how TOR will be effected by this

[Darksider]

Probably not at all. Development is already handled by a different company that just bought the SW license. It's already a model for what Disney says they want to do with the LucasArts label.

Not that that's stopped some of the player base from going fucking ballistic

[TheFeniX]

The force unleashed games were fun, but not up to kotor 1. I'm curious how TOR will be effected by this

Lucasarts always had some weird contracts WRT the SW IP. Anything overlapping with the movies or current media being produced by Lucas had to be explicitly approved by them, but the contracts for others games seemed to vary wildly.

For TOR, I'm pretty sure EA and LA reached the deal that EA would handle everything (development and marketing) and just bother to pay Lucasarts X %age of profit for the use of the license. I don't think Disney can override that contract, so TOR is going to be all EA and what's left of Bioware until EA guts the game. Then again, all you get from the conversations is bits and pieces. If someone has found anything else, I'd love to read it. But you usually have to wait a few years to hear from anyone with knowledge to just say "fuck it, here's how it went down."

[TheFeniX]

Disney and EA's unholy union is now set in stone.

BURBANK & REDWOOD CITY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Walt Disney Company (NYSE: DIS) and Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: EA) today announced a new multi-year exclusive licensing agreement to develop and publish globally new games based on Star Wars characters and storylines.

Under the agreement, EA will develop and publish new Star Wars titles for a core gaming audience, spanning all interactive platforms and the most popular game genres, while Disney will retain certain rights to develop new titles within the mobile, social, tablet and online game categories.

“This agreement demonstrates our commitment to creating quality game experiences that drive the popularity of the Star Wars franchise for years to come,” said John Pleasants, Co-President of Disney Interactive. “Collaborating with one of the world’s premier game developers will allow us to bring an amazing portfolio of new Star Wars titles to our fans around the world.”

“Every developer dreams of creating games for the Star Wars universe,” said EA Labels President Frank Gibeau. “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.”

Eh..... DICE and Visceral.... DICE does good work when let loose. Maybe new Battlefront? But, I'm to jaded to even bother with cautious optimism at this moment.

I have to wonder if SWTOR is considered enough of a success at this point for Disney to ignore it's utter failure for what it was supposed to be. Then again, maybe they figure EA can just flog the shit out of the license like LA did and squeeze a bit more money out of it. It wouldn't surprise me if EA is shouldering the financial burden of the games so Disney can just collect a paycheck like LA was doing with SWTOR.

[Havok]

Good. Can't be worse then the games we have gotten.

[Executor32]

The downside, though, is that if I want to play any new Star Wars games, I have to deal with Origin.

[Stark]

That's only a problem if you're playing games on PC; something I recommend avoiding where possible.

[bilateralrope]

The downside, though, is that if I want to play any new Star Wars games, I have to deal with Origin.

What is so bad about the current state of Origin ?

[Terralthra]

Well, for one thing, the Ori are lying to you, and have no intent of helping you Ascend.

[Irbis]

That's only a problem if you're playing games on PC; something I recommend avoiding where possible.

Yeah, alternatives (two dying, weak consoles, one upcoming that requires to be on net all the time, and one gutted, overpriced pc branded as console) sure are great. Especially when you can afford to upgrade one part on your PC with price difference every 3-4 games

Anyway, as long as EA finally gives TIE Fighter licence to someone competent and axes CW crap to go back to OT era I'll be happy. Whatever you say about EA, LA was even worse and they have a lot of experience with outsourcing good games.

[Executor32]

It's gotten a bit better since it first launched, but it's still not up to par with Steam. Considering that probably 95% of my PC game library is on Steam (including nearly every other Star Wars game I own), I prefer to get games there whenever possible. As it is, I've only used Origin for BF3, Crysis 3, and the SimCity beta.

Stark: Why do you recommend avoiding it, exactly?

[DaveJB]

one upcoming that requires to be on net all the time, and one gutted, overpriced pc branded as console.

Leaving aside that the "always online" requirement for the Xbox 720 hasn't been confirmed yet, you do realise that the 360 and PS3 only really differ from PCs in that they use PowerPC CPUs rather than x86 ones? In fact, the 720 and PS4 using x86 will be a good thing for PC gamers, since it should make it easier to port console games over to the PC without ending up with slow, horribly butchered Windows versions.

[Stark]

The joke is nothing but the rumourmill ever said any console current or planned would be 'always on', or define what that would even mean for anything or anyone. It's echo-chamber bullshit repeated as fact by clueless idiots who want to be part of the 'story'.

E32, I just like things that work. Poor old XBL is tottering a bit now they've hacked so much extra functionality into it and the hardware hasn't changed, but when I put a game in it works. On PC, even when using draconian services like Steam which attempt to emulate the console experience, this is seldom the case. Every time Los and I decide to play a PC game it takes hours of bullshit to install/get working/get into multi/get voice chat working/etc. It's like games on tablets and phones; they just work. The expectation that you'll pop the hood and fuck around to make them work does not exist. So yeah, if they made a good Star Wars game, on PC you would have to use Origin and do all the PC stuff, on console you just have to play the game. I believe, however, that console versions of these proprietary services are used in the background anyway - I believe I have a series of third party service 'accounts' from EA and the like that I've never actually manually used.

[Executor32]

You've had bad luck, then, because I haven't had to 'pop the hood and fuck around' to make a game work in a very long time, with the exception of old games that don't officially support widescreen resolutions. Hell, I've never even had to fuck around getting voice chat to work, because every game I've really wanted to use it in (coops games with my brother) has implemented Steam's voice chat. I only had to set it up once, and now all I have to do is put the microphone in front of me and I'm good to go.

[Stark]

So is it just valve loyalty chips that make it a problem? If it's fine for you, great stuff. Play the theoretical Star Wars game on PC.

[TheFeniX]

Anyway, as long as EA finally gives TIE Fighter licence to someone competent and axes CW crap to go back to OT era I'll be happy. Whatever you say about EA, LA was even worse and they have a lot of experience with outsourcing good games.

Tie-Fighter is so dead, that's highly unlikely. It's almost 20 years dead. Two generations of gamers dead. It's not coming back: there is no Santa Clause. The world is a terrible place and everything you love is dead or going to die someday. Is there a big selling arcade flight sim out there that isn't Ace Combat? Because EA is unlikely to touch anything that won't push 5 zillion units. Ubisoft only took a crack at the genre for one game until they released the shit-pile HAWX2 sequel and killed the "series."

I hope I'm wrong and there is something in the works for the Tie/X-Wing series, but I wouldn't bet on it.

On this weird "PC vs Console" tangent: the whole "PC requires a hammer to install games and Sherlock Holmes to find ATI drivers" is soooo 2002.

[CaptHawkeye]

Ace Combat doesn't even sell well anymore. Which has a lot to do with the fact that those games haven't changed much since the 90s. A new TIE Fighter game would be no different, since just by electing to bring back an old series the developers are just trying to make lightning strike twice but now with 140% more ambient light and specular mapping! Brand slaves would demand the game be just like it was 20 years ago. Misunderstanding that 20 years ago the game was popular for its impressive technical accomplishments, not its gameplay.

I can see it all now, huge investment made in the game by returning (Hint: creatively bankrupt) development team and overconfident publisher. ("This game was popular decades ago, now it'll be bigger than Halo right?") TIE Fighter 2 boasts F2P model and 20 year old gameplay as major selling points. Hardcore fans return, new fans attracted by F2P demo, often don't stick around complaining of excessive downtime and cumbersome UI. Development slows as popularity rapidly declines after initial release. Hardcore fans bitch on the forums that today's gamers are just "CoD fanboys" and "kids", preemptively dismissing all criticism of the game with "you just suck go back to CoD lol".

TIE Fighter 2 either remains forever niche or is cancelled after legal battle develops between dev team and publishers over some minor issue that is actually just a front for the publisher trying to get its investment back.

[Havok]

Ugh Tie Fighter was boring 20 fucking years ago.

[Cykeisme]

Maybe now DICE can do Battlefront 3. Hyuk hyuk.

[Meest]

Only way space sims are coming back is if the new Wing Commander project does well. Telltale style adventure seems to be doing ok but still not AAA budget worthy yet, I would like to see some old genres back with newer tech.

[Darksider]

Only way space sims are coming back is if the new Wing Commander project does well.

There making a new Wing Commander game? That's a surprise. I honestly thought Space Sims were dead to major companies like EA, and that they'd be forever limited to small indie releases and mods.

[Starglider]

Misunderstanding that 20 years ago the game was popular for its impressive technical accomplishments, not its gameplay.

People didn't buy the game to look at scrolling starfields and the occassional low-poly spaceship. We had demos for that. The gameplay was and is fun to a certain group of players, largely the same ones who buy realistic flight sims where you spend 30 mins flying to the target and then 5 mins trying to work out which key combination switches the radar into a mode where you can actually fire a missile. That was a significant fraction of the PC gamer audience back in the early 90s, when you still had to have a fair bit of computer knowledge just to get DOS games to run properly. The market has expanded massively since then and diluted that segment of the audience to a tiny fraction, as well as offering lots of other gameplay styles and online diversions that make spending hours flying a realistic flight sim seem like a poor (fun) return on (time) investment by comparison.

That said I wouldn't write off sims entirely. Car racing sims still do good business on consoles and PCs, despite being very repetitive and derrivative in gameplay terms. The game industry runs on fads and marketing similar to the movie industry, I think the mainstream market is there to support a mild sim resurgence (with legacy tedious bullshit removed or skippable) just as soon as the games media are ready to write stories about it being the next cool thing. We've seen something like that with graphical adventures recently, particularly on the iPad.

[Havok]

A TIE/X-Wing sim would be fine, even a complete sim, IF I could jump out and play the Force of Gears of Alpha Effect between escort missions and not crap like what they put in the MMOs.

I would be all for a complete sim where you buy a new $20-$40 disc/dlc for a new planet/sector every couple of months if the galaxy was a giant sandbox and I could fly all the way across it whenever I felt like.
I mean I would sim geek the fuck out, but you need incentive. I need to be able to by some new boots on one planet and fly across the galaxy to get the green piping for my new pants on another.

GE: It would be better if I could get/buy any ship I wanted like the Falcon or a Star Destroyer in micro transactions.

[Vendetta]

I think using the Star Wars license for a F2P space pew pew like Star Conflict would be the best case scenario.

I don't think you can carry people's interest with that type of game any more like you could 20 years ago. When you actually look back at the old X-Wing and TIE Fighter games what they actually were is 60+ missions that were mostly amazingly similar and most of the challenge was just about learning spawn patterns so you were in the right place at the right time.

A competitive online game avoids that because you have the inherent variability of human opposition, and you solve the problem that Star Conflict itself has compared to the historical pew pews which is that it's got no audience buy in for its made up designs.

[Stark]

They'd probably be better off stealing ME3s play wholesale and tacking World of Blasters onto it.