Three New Games Announced by EA Silos Star Wars and Respawn
Respawn Entertainment, the developers of Titanfall, and Jedi Fallen Order have had a wild ride. Respawn Entertainment has been a part of many projects, including creating the Xbox One launch window and the exiting of Infinity Ward and Activision. Electronic Arts purchased the studio in 2017. Respawn quickly became the company’s golden child. Today’s announcement that three more Star Wars titles are in development is a perfect example.
Respawn has announced that they are working on a follow-up to the Jedi Fallen Order with a blog post. This was unannounced for a while. Respawn is currently working on a first-person shooter in the Star Wars universe. BitReactor is a newly-announced strategic game studio created by former XCOM designers from Firaxis.
Except for the Jedi Fallen Order 2nd sequel, these games are unlikely to be released and are still very much in development. EA intends to recruit for these games by making the announcement early. Respawn is a large company, but it doesn’t have enough resources to support 3-4 AAA games simultaneously in development. These games will likely be available mid- to late-generation.
That would likely make these games the first Star Wars titles produced by EA outside of their ten-year console-but-not-counting-VR-and-also-not-LEGO exclusivity deal with Disney and Lucasfilm. Electronic Arts produced four significant games in that time: Star Wars Battlefront II and III, Jedi Fallen Order and Squadrons. They seem to have cancelled more Star Wars titles than they have published. EA appears to be just releasing announcements about everything in production during the ninth year of their agreement. This is a classic movie by the Redwood company.
However, this is also typical EA in that they often rely on one developer to get positive press. It is hard to not worry about EA funnelling Respawn down a similar path as BioWare. They put too much emphasis on the developer’s brand and lost sight of what made them great. This time, Zampella is on EA’s board, so maybe that was avoided. We’ll have to wait to see the outcome.
