UPDATE: In the wake of cancelling yet another Star Wars title that they've had in development, EA assures fans it is "committed" to making more Star Wars games, despite now having cancelled more games than it's actually released in 6 years.
EA issued a statement in response to the report that the open-world game by EA Vancouver, which was originally an action-adventure being produced by Dead Space developers Visceral Games and was cancelled, has been cancelled. You can see the statement below.
EA issued the statement to Kotaku, following their report of the latest cancellation.
"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. 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."
The EA open-world Star Wars game was now being developed by EA Vancouver - a substantially large studio handling support for a number of EA franchises, such as FIFA and Battlefront, and they took up the job at hand starting October 2017, when EA shut down Visceral.
Granted, when it was being developed by Visceral, said Star Wars title was still a linear action adventure, and Vancouver then reappropriated the assets for an open world game proper. Good move? Bad move? EA seems to think it wasn't going well, that's for sure.
Code-named Orca, this reimagination of the Visceral Star Wars title by Vancouver would've had us playing the role of a scoundrel or bounty hunter as they explore open-world planets across the Star Wars universe. The silver lining in this situation is that EA hasn't actually fired anyone over the closure of the project, so people at least still have their jobs.
So that project was essentially cancelled twice, and Assassin's Creed co-creator Jade Raymond was heading a project at EA Motive (as well as helping with the open-world title) which is also presumably cancelled. And don't even think about Star Wars 1313 and Star Wars: First Assault. And wasn't BioWare supposed to be doing something other than Star Wars: The Old Republic? Like a Knights of the Old Republic revival?
In 6 years with the Star Wars license, EA has released two games, and only has one announced right now: Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. We can't help but wonder, is it going to be cancelled next?
