Staff were involved of the shutdown this morning, according to a reliable Kotaku source. Some 150 people were laid off, and both of the studio's current projects--Star Wars: First Assault and Star Wars 1313--were cancelled.
This comes as no surprise. Lucasarts hasn't been making good games since...oh, wow. I can't remember the last good game they made. It has been a loooong while.
To be fair, they may be closing the studio to make room for something better. Star Wars licensed games sell well enough. Disney may have something else in mind.
With all the positive press this title has already gotten I'm sure one of the big publishers won't hesitate in snatching this up. Oh how I wish Sony would buy it though.
Lucas Rep Says Star Wars 1313 Might Be Saved Through Licensing
https://www.gameinformer.co... "It is worth noting that we are looking for proven external partners who can help us provide video games to our fans. We still believe in the video game industry, we still will provide Star Wars games, we're just looking at different models rather than internal production... They're evaluating everything. There's always a possibility that it [Star Wars 1313] can still come out via licensing."
When it comes to anything right around the 1st of April i can never tell. Even though its the 3rd, this could be making the rounds from Monday and everyone else is passing it along thinking its new.
Need I remind anyone that Lucasart's last game was Star Wars Kinect? A title that was shown off three years ago at Microsoft's E3 and ended up like...welll...Star Wars Kinect. Before that was the incredibly mediocre Force Unleashed 2, and before that was the okay but overhyped Force Unleashed. Am I missing something here? The talent left LucasArts a long time ago.
Star wars kinect was bad, the Force Unleashed could have been better, kotor has way dated mechanics...Honestly I don't think I've ever played a GREAT Star Wars game.. I'd rather just play Mass Effect because it's closer to the actual Star Wars feel than anyone has got with an actual Star Wars game.
"Star wars kinect was bad, the Force Unleashed could have been better, kotor has way dated mechanics...Honestly I don't think I've ever played a GREAT Star Wars game"
Battlefront 2. It's available on Steam and still pretty popular online, you should check it out.
This kinda annoys me. As mentioned it has been awhile since LucasArts made a really good game but I think I know why it bothers me.
Firstly is the legacy of the studio. I mean they may be a shadow of what they used to be now but they used to be one of the best studios in the industry making some of the most intelligent and funny games ever.
Second Star Wars 1313 looked great and I'm not just talking about visually. While it did look stunning it also looked like they were taking inspiration from the right places and had it come out as intended it may have been the game that put them back in a much more positive light. This just could be me hoping for something more then what was happening but that kinda goes back to what I mentioned above. It's a shame. I wonder if anything similar to the games cancelled will be made via the new method Disney seems set on.
@Pintheshadows We were likley never going to see another Grim Fandango. In fact I would bet it's more likely to see one now. Tim Schaffer likes to own the rights to his games. Hence why he bought the rights to Brutal Legend back. Now that the Studio won't be making games it's Possible Double Fine will be able to buy the rights to some of the older LucasArts stuff like Grim Fandango because Disney likely cares only of the Star Wars stuff.
Dont know about you guys, but YAY! No more $hitty Star Wars games. They didnt have quality control over their games and just license the franchise to whoever. Glad i'll never see Darth Vader dancing.
Luckily Star Wars is such a known thing, it may be easier for others to make such a game compared to other franchises, but still.
What it means is 1313 isn't going to be made. First Assault isn't going to be made.
The studio has been disbursed and as they said (maybe as an update) in the article, the chances are effectively zero anyone will pick them up and be able to get those people making it to finish it.
What this also means is that if Disney licensed a game to be made, we're about two or so years from it being released. Probably late 2015. Sad, I was looking forward to a game in late 2013, and perhaps first assault sometime in 2014.
They didn't 'cancel' them. I read the original article earlier today. They put it on 'halt' and may continue with it later.... God I hate articles like this
To me this is the lowest of the lowest. I was really excited for 1313 and because Disney has nothing on there mind but making money its ruined. You have to have passion and love to make great games that take devs sometimes a half of a decade to make but they do it out of the end product for the smiles from us gamers. What this tells me is Disney could care one less about us and will never ever see another penny, nickel, dime etc. From me. Sad day.
I couldn't care less if they expand the Star Wars series. George Lucas killed it himself. JJ Abrams might make a decent SW movie but I'd rather he stuck to Trek. Joss Whedon should have done SW. Anyway, I just want someone to make updated versions of X-Wing, Tie Fighter, and X-Wing vs Tie Fighter. PSN vs XBL, one side can be the rebels and one side can be the empire. It would be epic, though I know cross platform play would be highly unlikely.
I said this was going to happen 20 days ago and all you morons w/ the exception of 3 "DISAGREED." Now what? Why dont you do the usual nerd thing you always do and make a dumb petition so that the executives at Disney can laugh at you.
What sucks is that those 150 people are going to have to find a new job, which often means moving far away, and arranging for your family to do so also. I'm hoping that this isn't the case for most of these guys, who have been constrained by awful management and awkward, inconsequential projects for years. It's not their fault, it was their higher-ups.
But "Lucas should never have sold to Disney?" Lucas had older Star Wars fans just waiting for a new franchise offering that wasn't geared only toward kids, and hardly anything worked. At least they're trying now. And the same applies to their software branch...
Lucasarts was sitting on a goldmine of previous IP, stuff that had long-standing fans (not as long as Star Wars, but quite the same) and what did they do? Not too much in the past ten or so years. They made TFU, which would have been awesome with more money and time put into it, but oh well, it was a "meh" franchise instead, trying to be Uncharted and failing. It took them until 2009 to make any of their adventure games compatible with current PC hardware (finally getting on Steam), and that was just a couple of games, no more. Where was a new Day of the Tentacle, or at least something in the Maniac Mansion series? That would have taken so little in resources compared to their giant, lumbering TFU projects. And they'd have made a decent profit. But no, they sat on all of that IP, doing diddly-squat, burning millions on tepid Star Wars games.
The best move they made was giving Monkey Island to Telltale - that new series was nice. And this is why it's good news; Disney will be selling the licenses to these games, and I hope, beyond hope, that Telltale will pick up Full Throttle and reboot the thing.
They killed Junction Point...whose release of Epic Mickey 2 was measured as a commercial failures when attached to the development/marketing budget/s.
They killed LucasArts, a studio that hasn't been profitable and only had one title on the horizon that likely wouldn't have put it back in the black.
Honestly, Disney's decision to shutdown studios is not a difficult one to understand. In an effort to wisely control the cash-flow, they remove the cash-hemorrhaging studios and streamline processes.
While I can honestly say that my nostalgia has taken a square kick in the nuts, I understand the business behind the decision/s. Shrewd though it may be, it will payoff in the long run to both Disney and the quality of licensed games we see coming out in the future.
Therein lies the problem in corporate world. They made the decision to buy the company in the first place, and instead of turning it around, the best decision is to kill it completely, and shortly after the purchase. And the talented people there who are now out of a job, had no say in any of it.
Again, you assume they bought it with intent to "turn it around". I'd say it was part of the deal, and in that they had to evaluate the longevity of a company that hasn't made a profit in quite some time...in fact...they were hemorrhaging money on a project that had a floating release.
As for the 150 people without a job...a ripple in the Force, certainly, but they're all talented and will find work suitable for their skills soon enough.
The end result is that instead of a company that hasn't been delivering content to their fans, they will own the property and projects and license it out to fresh development studios with new ideas and re-invigorate the franchise...something LucasArts has failed to do. I love Force Unleashed, but lets be frank...everything Star Wars related under their helm in the last 10-odd years have been squandered money-grabs that truly haven't captured the potential nor the imagination of the franchise.
I see only a bright future here for Star Wars games. I see new and more risky endeavors LucasArts wasn't willing to take. I see a burgeoning market leveraged by Disney dollars and shrewd business decisions that will allow for the growth of a beloved franchise.
Probably won't be bad as it seems. The greatest star wars game ever made, Knights of the Old Republic, was not developed by Lucas Arts, it was developed by Bioware. Neither was Battlefront 1 or 2 those were developed by Pandemic Games.
They will just get other publishers to publish the games, but continue to have outside developers develop games based in the star wars universe
This is very sad news...
I was hoping Disney where going to expand the star wars series.
Um....whaaa?!
Star Wars 1313 looked incredible.
Just horribly depressing news. First, they cancel Clone Wars on CN, and now this.. Lucas should never have sold to Disney. >:/
Hopefully, the devs and everyone involved find safe havens elsewhere in the industry.
Go FUUUUUUUUU yourself Disney they have killed so many developers this generation.
Well that killed my day completely. This is what i was affraid of when disney bought lucas arts. Hope they choke on disney infinity.
I bet the new Starwars movies are just gonna be 2 hours of Jarjar Binks and emo Anakin.
wow, those Star Wars game looked good to.
This is terrible news, mostly because it looked like we might finally get a decent couple of Star Wars games with 1313 and that XBLA shooter.
LucasArts was pretty bad at giving people what they wanted though, KOTOR 3, SWBF3, Jedi Academy 3 and a new Rogue Squadron as examples.