Electronic Arts Takes Over 'Star Wars' Video Games

Since Disney purchased Lucasfilm, most of their business-related activity has been in the subtraction column. They got rid of Lucasarts, cut employees at Industrial Light & Magic, and disbanded the animation department. Monday they made their biggest addition to date, hiring Electronic Arts to exclusively make Star Wars-themed video games in the future. Two of the company's subdivisons, DICE (best known for the Battlefield franchise) and Visceral (the Dead Space franchise) will both make brand new games while BioWare (makers of Star Wars: The Old Republic) will also continue to make games.

Here's the full press release from Business Wire (via Kotaku).

The Walt Disney Company and Electronic Arts Inc.today announced a new multi-year exclusive licensing agreement to develop and publish globally new games based on Star Wars characters and storylines.

Under the agreement, EA will develop and publish new Star Wars titles for a core gaming audience, spanning all interactive platforms and the most popular game genres, while Disney will retain certain rights to develop new titles within the mobile, social, tablet and online game categories.

"This agreement demonstrates our commitment to creating quality game experiences that drive the popularity of the Star Wars franchise for years to come," said John Pleasants, Co-President of Disney Interactive. "Collaborating with one of the world's premier game developers will allow us to bring an amazing portfolio of new Star Wars titles to our fans around the world."

"Every developer dreams of creating games for the Star Wars universe," said EA Labels President Frank Gibeau. "Three of our top studios will fulfill that dream, crafting epic adventures for Star Wars fans. DICE and Visceral will produce new games, joining the BioWare team which continues to develop for the Star Wars franchise. The new experiences we create may borrow from films, but the games will be entirely original with all new stories and gameplay."

Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

Also not disclosed are if any of those companies plan to continue working on Star Wars 1313, the Boba Fett themed third-person shooter that was cancelled when Lucasarts was disbanded.

From what I'm reading online, it seems like this is not a movie that gamers are happy about. What are your thoughts?