“We’ve been working quietly behind the scenes for a while now, waiting for this moment,” Lucasfilm Games VP Douglas Reilly said today in an interview with StarWars.com. The comment was made after a huge announcement: Ubisoft is making an open-world Star Wars game. What’s more, Star Wars games are no longer exclusively in the hands of Electronic Arts.
As reported by WIRED, Ubisoft’s Swedish studio Massive Entertainment has partnered with Lucasfilm Games to take the Star Wars franchise in a new open-world direction. “We’ve got a team of professionals here at Lucasfilm Games who can work with the developers, shape the stories, shape the creative, shape the games, to make them really resonate with fans and deliver across a breadth of platforms, genres, and experiences so that all of our fans can enjoy the IPs that they know and love,” Reilly said.
We’re thrilled to announce we are working with @Ubisoft and @UbiMassive to develop a brand-new, story-driven, open-world Star Wars adventure!
Learn more about the future of @LucasfilmGames in the Star Wars galaxy and beyond: https://t.co/uO1K1pivl2 pic.twitter.com/wRDccZvi3o
— Lucasfilm Games (@LucasfilmGames) January 13, 2021
With graphically demanding games like The Division under their belt, Massive is ready to use their Snowdrop engine to create a new vision of a galaxy far, far away. It’s still early in development, so the details are sparse and virtually nothing is known about the story. However, the opportunity comes in the wake of the Star Wars franchise’s eight years of exclusivity with EA, evincing Lucasfilm’s growing interest in expanding its beloved universe to other visionaries, artists, and storytellers. “We want to uncover the stories they’ve always imagined telling and make them resonate with our fans, and across the wider Star Wars galaxy,” said Reilly.
Although EA is roughly eight years into their ten-year exclusivity deal for developing Star Wars games, Lucasfilm Games are permitted to branch out to find new partnerships, even if EA is able to continue developing Star Wars games in the meantime. In the interview with WIRED, Disney’s senior vice president of Global Games and Interactive Experiences at Disney Sean Shoptaw said, “EA has been and will continue to be a very strategic and important partner for us now and going forward…but we did feel like there’s room for others.”
The news also comes in the wake of another huge announcement from Lucasfilm Games. On January 12, Bethesda revealed in a tweet that a new Indiana Jones game is in the works. The announcement came with a mysterious teaser that offers a few clues about the upcoming game. The game is being developed by Wolfenstein creators MachineGames, while Bethesda Game Studios’ Todd Howard is taking the helm as executive producer. The game will tell a standalone story set during the peak of Indy’s career. That’s all we really know about it for now, but we will be sure to update you here at Guide Stash as new details emerge.
A new Indiana Jones game with an original story is being developed by the award-winning studio, @MachineGames, and executive produced by game industry icon Todd Howard of Bethesda Games Studios. Learn more at https://t.co/cfr49ZN4ei. https://t.co/iUpMVlnC1O
— Lucasfilm Games (@LucasfilmGames) January 12, 2021