EA Acquires Rights from Disney to Publish Star Wars Games - The UpStream

After Disney announced it was shutting down LucasArts following itsacquisition of the brand late last year, the entire gaming community wondered what would happen to the popular franchises and titles that came out of that studio. Disney went on record to say they were looking to set up licensing deals as soon as possible. Well, this may be bad news to some, but Electronic Arts has now brokered a deal with Disney to produce and distribute upcoming Star Wars titles. Disney and EA have put together a "new multi-year exclusive licensing agreement to develop and publish globally new games based on Star Wars characters and storylines."

Here's the info from the blog post by Frank Gibeau,

Today, The Walt Disney Company has announced that they have chosen EA to create new Star Wars experiences for gamers worldwide.

The magic of Star Wars is interwoven into the worlds, characters, planets and amazing battles. It is a universe that lends itself perfectly to gaming. Our agreement unlocks a whole new future of Star Wars games that will span consoles, PCs, tablets, mobile and more.

While we don't have any details to share today on specific titles, our development teams are already brimming with design ideas. The EA Studios that will develop these games are some of the most innovative and popular creative teams in the world, and include DICE and Visceral, in addition to the BioWare team, which is already developing for the Star Wars franchise. These imaginative teams will make games that may borrow from films, but the games will be entirely original with all new stories. Powering it all will be the Frostbite 3 development engine - guaranteeing incredible graphic fidelity, environments and characters.

In the official announcement, EA said that Disney will keep "certain rights to develop new titles within the mobile, social, tablet and online game categories" but EA will have the rights to put out games for all current platforms. Disney's co-president (I think the one that handles the "big picture" stuff) John Pleasants said,

This agreement demonstrates our commitment to creating quality game experiences that drive the popularity of the Star Wars franchise for years to come. 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.

This is definitely an intriguing move on EA's part, as recently they've changed CEOs, while axing an entire gaming studio in itself, Playfish. At least we know that the DICE and Visceral teams are both very talented and are outside the doom that is their EA Sports developers. I just hope that each Star Wars character won't cost 300 Microsoft Points as DLC.