About 150 people were laid off from LucasArts after Disney decided to shut down the company down. LucasArts will now focus on licensing games rather than making them. Disney says that their current games could be sold out to a different publisher, though that is probably an unlikely occurrence. Their studio already put a freeze on making games last month so many people working for the company knew it was only a matter of time before they put the final nail in the coffin. It's a shame too, because I was really looking forward to Star Wars: 1313. Definitely the grittier direction that would have fit Star Wars perfectly. You can read more about it here or here.
To be honest I'm not surprised. I really wasn't interested in 1313 and it's been a while since I was impressed by (or even interested in) one of their titles. The Force Unleashed was decent, from what I hear TFUII was abysmal, I can't speak for Monkey Island or any other releases but overall I'm just kind of "meh" about it. 1313 was getting a decent amount of hype but overall, it looked like a rather trite shooter set in the Star Wars universe. And I don't think anything needs to be said about The Old Republic. Let them just license games and leave the developing to other companies. All they've really got to do is release Battlefront III and they'll be back in the black. Knights of the Old Republic III would also be nice plz, retcon everything they ****ed with TOR (essentially, retcon the retcons) and make things right
Unfortunately I already knew this was coming. There was a conversation about this back when I was at the camp, and I was actually thinking 1313 might be a decent game, if not different from the generic Star Wars games, but does this mean that Lucas Arts isn't going to be making any more Star Wars games in general?
We've had this talk. You're talking about the novel Revan, not the game TOR, which basically never touches upon it's predecessors, it's essentially independent. And I'd still like to see these retcons and then what's ****ed up about em. I don't think the 1313 would have been bad, the bounty hunter element is very appealing to most fans and the physics and locals would've made it probably more interesting then either of the Force Unleashed games. Too bad. LucasArts is a legend in terms of what they've accomplished and created over the years, with industry greats being a part of the team at some time or capacity. It's a shame to see another company going under, and the loss of jobs is a blow. Hope that the best and lovers of their industry keep going on and create fabulous game sin the future.
Star Wars 1313 might not be cancelled just yet. Here's a bit of an update from Gameinformer "All of these things happened at once. Naturally, as any company that goes through a big announcement like this, you have to look through your whole portfolio and realign some things. 1313 was looking fantastic, the reception has been great. Our other unannounced titles are fine, it just got to a point where from a business standpoint we couldn't continue developing those internally and keep up with the direction that the company was going." Website Kotaku is reporting that 150 LucasArts employees have been laid off, and that the games Star Wars: First Assault and Star Wars 1313 have been cancelled. However, the representative we spoke to said that the company is also evaluating its options regarding projects currently in development, which could be licensed out to external development and publishing partners: "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."
