News broke yesterday, citing unnamed but well placed sources at EA, that the open world Star Wars game under development at EA Vancouver had been canceled. Coming on the heels of two troubled Star Wars releases, and not much else, this seemed to be further evidence of EA not being quite fit for handling a license as big as Star Wars by itself.
However, in a statement that the publisher released to Variety, EA reiterated its commitment to making Star Wars games, citing this year’s upcoming Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order as proof. Notably, the statement does not deny the reports that EA Vancouver’s game is canceled (though it does label them as speculation)
“There’s been speculation overnight about one of our ‘Star Wars’ projects. 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,” says EA’s statement. “We’re fully committed to making more ‘Star Wars’ games, we’re very excited about ‘Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order’ from Respawn, and we’ll share more about our new projects when the time is right.”
This does seem to line up with the reports yesterday stating that EA is repurposing what EA Vancouver was working on into a new, smaller scale project. I just hope that eventually, we’ll see the quality and quantity of Star Wars games that we all hope for—from EA, or otherwise.
