Here’s a question that’s been going around for a while now, since the future of Star Wars games is looking pretty bleak and EA seems to have canceled yet another one. Many fans are saying “enough is enough” and they want Disney to fix this issue they very clearly had a part in by allowing other companies to make Star Wars games. Is it fair to say that EA should lose their license, based on how they have performed? Well, someone very close to the Star Wars universe seems to think so. Gary Whitta, the co-writer of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story has said what a lot fans have been thinking. For Electronic Arts (EA) to have the “one of a kind” Star Wars licensing deal taken away, due to their mishandling of the franchise. Whitta details his thought process and frustrations during a video interview with Kinda Funny Games, referring to…
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Series of EA Project Cancellations Leaves Gamers Fuming as it Under Delivers on Disney’s Star Wars Gaming Franchise
In the latest breaking news involving EA, the company failed to dispel strong rumours from reputable sources, rumours which proclaimed the cancellation of the promised, long awaited and much anticipated, future release of the next single player title meant to continue the massively popular Star Wars saga. Initially developed under the codename Ragtag which aimed at creating a linear gameplay adventure. However, a mid-2017 reimagining refocused the teams to instead develop an open world environment re-focused on delivering a broader player experience. Ironically this mid-2017 reimagining seemingly is possibly also the reason for the project’s death, since developing “a broader experience” would apparently have required too long a build period, driving costs up. The most common fan response to that would be somewhere along the lines of “come-on EA, Bethesda managed to create just such a series of open world games with each episode of The Elder Scrolls series and…
Visceral studio closing down. Unnamed Star Wars game moved to EA Vancouver
EA posted an update on the VISCERAL Star Wars project late last night. According to EA’s Vice President Patrick Söderlund, the studio is being closed down, and the game is being moved over to other EA studios, which will see the game through until its release. The Star Wars title was announced in 2013, and had that former Uncharted and Naughty Dog director Amy Hennig on the team, who was co-writing the title with Todd Stashwick. Posted by Patrick Söderlund Our industry is evolving faster and more dramatically than ever before. The games we want to play and spend time with, the experiences we want to have in those games, and the way we play…all those things are continually changing. So is the way games are made. In this fast-moving space, we are always focused on creating experiences that our players want to play…and today, that means we’re making a significant change with one of our…
EA Announces Next 4 Star Wars Games: 2018 and Beyond
What does the future look like for Star Wars games? Well, it seems it will be very, very bright. As predicted, we’re not going to see the end of Star Wars games any time soon. With movies plotted to release over the next number of years, we’re also going to see new games – four new Star Wars games, to be exact. EA has a plan and they’ve now released at least some information about that plan to us. As a part of this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), we got short glimpses at each one of these new games. The teases were part of the EA press conference and as we already know, EA has the publishing rights to Star Wars titles for the next 10 years. So what are they doing with it? Well, here’s what we know about the released titles so far: A Star Wars VR…
SWTOR Follow Up Analysis from EA’s FY16 Report
EA’s Annual Report in the form of its Form 10-K filed with the SEC this week talks a bit about SWTOR. Where does it stand now? Is it gaining more attention? swtoreconomics had some opinions to share on the matter and we think you’ll find it interesting too: “Star Wars: The Old Republic has received a lot of attention for its episodic story content cycle that began in October 2015 with the release of Knights of the Fallen Empire and opinions vary widely. There is little doubt that the financial success or failure of this content cycle will be the largest factor in determining the future path of the game. There is one paragraph that provides essentially all of the information in the entire 97 page report regarding Star Wars: The Old Republic specifically: For fiscal year 2016, service and other revenue was $1,899 million, primarily driven by FIFA Ultimate Team and Star Wars: The Old Republic. Service and other revenue for fiscal year 2016…
SWTOR Subscribers up 33% Since Fallen Empire Announcement
The Electronic Arts Reports Q2 FY16 Financial Results were recently released and gave us some important insight to how SWTOR is responding to the Fallen Empire announcement. In fact, it says that subs are up 33% since. Let’s take a quick look at the overview. From the highlights: Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ subscribers increased 33% since the announcement of the latest expansion at E3, Knights of the Fallen Empire. Over 9.5 million players joined the Star Wars™ Battlefront™ open beta, the largest beta in EA’s history. The game will launch worldwide starting November 17, 2015. Other selected financial highlights: For the quarter, non-GAAP net revenue of $1.146 billion was above guidance of $1.075 billion. Diluted non-GAAP EPS of $0.65 was above guidance of $0.40. Non-GAAP net revenue for EA’s FIFA, Madden NFL and Hockey Ultimate Team™ live services continue to perform well, collectively up 64% year-over-year. EA repurchased 1.8 million…
SWTOR Segment from EA GamesCom Press Conference
We have an interesting update today on SWTOR from EA’s GamesCom Press Conference. The SWTOR segment touched on a few things we have not gotten updated on in some time, such as the player count. They also touch on some things that are coming soon in SWTOR (things we all known about already but that might serve to bring in some newer or returning players). From EA’s GamesCom Press Conference: The results have been remarkable. Every month, more than a million players are logging in, playing with their friends, and embarking on their own personal Star Warstm Saga. So basically, EA took almost two minutes out of their press conference today to mention SWTOR. You can see the video for yourself at IGN, but the highlights are: recap of the last 18 months reminder that it’s gone free to play updated content Galactic Starfighter new guild rewards new PvP warzones new Flashpoints and…
Electronic Arts Names Amy Hennig Creative Director For ‘Star Wars’ Project
Steve Papoutsis, the Vice President and General Manager at Visceral Games had some important news to share recently. Amy Hennig was named creative director for their upcoming ‘Star Wars’ Project. Here is some of what he had to say about the announcement:
EA Wants to Create Jaw Dropping Star Wars Games
According to recent stories, EA wants to refresh the Star Wars game license and create games that will make “your jaw drop”. For Star Wars game fans, this is good news but will they really pull off this hefty goal? One can only hope, right? “The most important thing for me is that we take the Star Wars license and come up with games where peoples’ jaws drop,” said Patrick Soderlund of EA games to Polygon. “We need to do with this what [Batman: Arkham Asylum] did for the Batman license.” The first game they are set to work with is Star Wars: Battlefront, a game that many fans have been waiting a very long time to see happen. Soderlund says the DICE team will have access to this work. While they could not tell Polygon much about the game, it’s still great news to know it is in development and…
TIME talks about SWTOR and EA
As we reported this week, EA just got the exclusive rights to publish all Star Wars games in the future. As one of the largest video game company in existence, it’s likely EA had to fork out loads of cash to get this exclusive deal. EA will now have the rights to produce Star Wars games for the “core gaming audience” whereas Disney, who canned developer LucasArts just last month, will retain the rights to design Star Wars games for mobile, social and online gamers. So now that the big news has been announced, it seems everyone has an opinion and Time doesn’t seem to be taking a positive stance on this new relationship. Here’s a snippet from a piece they did that discusses the topic and SWTOR at length: And yet EA has a spotty track record when it comes to franchise tie-ins. Whereas handing a major property off…
EA Responds to “Worst Company in America” Poll; Makes History
EA Chief Operating Officer, Peter Moore, has responded to what looks to be EA’s second year in a row winning The Consumerist’s ‘Worst Company in America’ award. Their stock might be on the rise but there are clearly still some issues that EA needs to work out. EA is the first company in the contest’s history to win this award twice (not the type of award you want to brag about, right?) Electronic Arts COO Peter Moore had some things to say about this development: “Are we really the “Worst Company in America?” Moore asks. “I’ll be the first to admit that we’ve made plenty of mistakes. These include server shut downs too early, games that didn’t meet expectations, missteps on new pricing models and most recently, severely fumbling the launch of SimCity. We owe gamers better performance than this.” He then goes on to explain how last year they won the…
EA’s Survival Has Been “A Rare Feat”
We’ve talked before here about the ups and downs of EA. They’ve had a rough couple of years and those shareholders who are still holding on saw stock drop from around $25 back in the winter of 2011 to just about $11 last August. Now they’re back up to around $18 a share. So those who have stayed in it for the long haul are seeing their efforts pay off. At last week’s Game Developer’s Conference, GamesIndustry International talked to EA president Frank Gibeau (a possible replacement for Riccitiello) about the state of EA: “It’s a dynamic industry. At one moment social is the hottest thing in the history of man, and the next minute it’s not. One minute console is dead, the next minute console is incredible. There’s no market in Russia, Brazil, China, and now we’re seeing some of the largest markets in the world in the emerging market. The…
John Riccitiello Resigns From Electronic Arts
EA CEO John Riccitiello submitted his resignation, effective March 30, the video game company announced Monday. In a blog post on the company’s website, executive chairman Larry Probst said the Board of Directors will immediately begin a search inside and outside the company for Riccitiello’s successor. Check out the Press release below. Electronic Arts Announces Change in Executive Leadership Larry Probst Appointed Executive Chairman, Effective Immediately Company Updates 2013 Fiscal Outlook REDWOOD CITY, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: EA) today announced that John Riccitiello will step down as Chief Executive Officer and as a member of the Board of Directors, effective March 30. The Board has appointed Larry Probst as Executive Chairman to ensure a smooth transition and to lead EA’s executive team while the Board conducts a search for a permanent CEO. The Board will consider internal and external candidates with the assistance of a leading executive search firm. Mr. Probst has played a leadership role…
EA Believes “Freemium” is the Future
Are free to play games with paid upgrades the way of the future? What happened to the days when you go to the store, buy a game and then own it outright- all of it, the full versions of it to play as you choose? Some said that SWTOR would be the last pay to play MMORPG and even it has now gone F2P. Of course, many question how “free” it actually is when there are so many restrictions that you need to pay to unlock. This is what many call “freemium” gameplay models. And if you ask Electronic Arts, freemium is where it’s at. Gamespot tells us: The freemium business model is “where things are going,” according to Electronic Arts vice president of mobile and social studios Nick Earl. Speaking to GameSpot sister site CNET about the recent launch of Real Racing 3, the executive explained that the mobile…
Irish BioWare Support Center for SWTOR Converting to General EA Use
The BioWare facility that was just built last year in Galway, Ireland to be a support center for SWTOR is now expanding and will become the home to EA’s European customer service needs. Basically this means that it will be general EA use and not strictly SWTOR support. They will offer support from this facility to all of EA’s major titles. They have dropped the BioWare Ireland name and will be hiring more than 300 new employees over the course of the next few months. The Irish Government looks at this as a good opportunity for job growth and is supportive of the expansion and what video games can do for their economy and job force.
SWTOR Community Management Team Hit with Layoffs
I brought you the story of layoffs at BioWare Austin yesterday. This was the second set of layoffs for the company this year and it seemed to come as a big shock, even to those affected. What would you do if you showed up for work one day like usual and were told to pack it up and go home? In this economy, there are probably many readers who can relate. Layoffs were first confirmed by developer Ben Marshall, who wrote the following in a status update on Twitter (the update has since been deleted): “Anyone know of a web developer position open in the Austin, TX area? Second round of layoffs at BioWare Austin and my name was on the list…” We also told you just recently about Georg Zoeller’s departure from the company. BioWare has yet to a announce replacement for Vogel as executive producer. Also announced today: EA to…
EA Denies SWTOR Job Cut Rumors
If you heard the news this week about Electronic Arts, then you may have heard they are laying off a lot of people. While it is true that the company is making some cuts, they are not “layoffs” in the traditional sense and they are not downsizing because SWTOR has failed. Actually, EA, like many gaming companies, has a huge variety of projects going on at different times. They may increase staff while they finish up a game project and then let those people go to other departments or let them go completely once the game is completed. This is how the industry works. Most game designers, writers and artists are hired on a project-by-project basis, not as actually company staff members. EA itself has basically said as much when the rumors spread about the layoffs: “There are no lay-offs as such, we always have projects growing and morphing,” EA…
Is EA The Worst Company in the US Today?
The Consumerist website has a yearly contest that is voted on by consumers on who they think is the worst company in the US. Many thought that some of the big banks or even online video companies would make the top spot this year but surprisingly, EA took it. EA had this to say about their spot as reported by whatculture.com: “We’re sure that bank presidents, oil, tobacco and weapons companies are all relieved they weren’t on the list this year, we’re going to continue making award-winning games and services played by more than 300 million people worldwide.” It seems as though EA is not very pleased about this award, even the folks at whatculture.com thought the answer was a bit ironic: “EA had a not so witty retort to the poll, showing it probably got under their skin a little which to me is a good thing.” Now, since…