Gamers always knew that Star Wars Battlefront was just the beginning. After signing an exclusive licensing deal with Disney, EA began putting together a list of potential Star Wars video games — and while DICE's shooter may have been pushed out in order to help market The Force Awakens, it was just one of many different projects in development.
Most of these different projects are shrouded in secrecy: sure, fans know that developers such as Visceral Games (Dead Space) and Respawn Entertainment (Titanfall) are working on Star Wars-related games, but that's about it.
Perhaps the best example of this is the newest studio of the Electronic Arts family: EA Motive, headed by former Assassin's Creed producer Jade Raymond, has been gearing up for work on some sort of mysterious Star Wars title. Otherwise, absolutely nothing is known about the game, save that EA was willing to announce its existence before the studio had even acquired a full-time development team.
While fans still don't know much about EA Motive's Star Wars project, the publisher did reveal that the studio now has a large enough staff to begin development. With 65 full-time developers, EA Motive has officially started work on its new Star Wars project!
So, for those who have lost count, let's go over all of the different Star Wars projects currently in development.
Star Wars Battlefront 2, developed by DICE, is the only title of which anyone has concrete knowledge. The game is being developed by the same team as the first, and is set to launch sometime in 2017 (probably right around the next movie). There are rumors that a single-player story or ground-to-space combat will return, but nothing has been confirmed quite yet.
The Star Wars game in development over at Visceral Games is arguably the most interesting of the lot: next to nothing about the game's plot or content has been made public, but many major game developers jumped ship to work on the project. This includes two of the lead writers for the Uncharted series, leading many to believe that the story will have a significantly large focus on story.
As for Respawn Entertainment, well ... aside from the fact that they're working with EA on a Star Wars game, no one knows anything about the project.
Finally, there's EA Motive's upcoming game — and much like Respawn Entertainment's project, the only thing gamers know for sure is that the game is in development.
Say what you will about Star Wars Battlefront — like that it was a hollow shell of a game full of cut features and overly-expensive DLC — but the future is looking bright for Star Wars games. Some of the biggest developers in the industry are working on these games — and it'll be interesting to see what sort of game a new team like EA Motive can bring to the table.
With any luck, we'll know more about EA's upcoming Star Wars games soon — E3 2016 kicks off on June 14.
