Earlier this year, it was announced that video game company Ubisoft would be making an open-world video game set in the Star Wars universe. This announcement marked the end of EA’s deal to be the exclusive creator of Star Wars games that was first announced in 2013.
More details about the game were revealed on Tuesday in an earnings call with Ubisoft. According to the CEO of the company, Yves Guillemot, the still-unnamed Star Wars game is in the very early stages of development.
Production of the game will be handled by Massive Entertainment, a subsidiary of Ubisoft that is best known for developing the Division series of video games from 2016 and 2019. On the call, Guillemont noted that Massive was a large enough studio that its work on Star Wars was not expected to cause a delay in upcoming Division titles and that the studio would be continuing to create installments for that series as well.
It was also noted that in addition to working on a Star Wars game, Massive Entertainment will be tacking on another major sci-fi property as well. Announced back in 2017, Massive Entertainment is developing a game set in James Cameron’s Avatar universe. The project has been delayed multiple times (along with the delays of the upcoming Avatar movies) but is still in active production and is currently scheduled to be released in late 2022 or early 2023.
It is still way too early in the development of the Star Wars game to announce a release date or even an official release year. Because the 2013 deal with EA stated that EA’s exclusivity with the property would last for 10 years, it wouldn’t be surprising if Ubisoft’s Star Wars game doesn’t arrive until some time in 2023 or even later. This means that it is likely the Star Wars game will be released after their Avatar project is complete. Ubisoft’s CFO, Frederick Duguet, expanded a bit more on the release timeline of the project:
"We didn’t mention any specific dates. The game is at an early stage of development so we will have to wait a bit before telling you more about timing."
For the past several years EA has only released a handful of video games during their time of exclusivity with Star Wars. Their first major release was Battlefront in 2015, followed by the sequel in 2017. Both games were met with mixed reviews with the loot box system in the second game causing particular backlash for the franchise. EA’s more recent releases (Star Wars: Fallen Order in 2019 and Star Wars: Squadrons in 2020) were met with more positive receptions. However, the idea that different companies getting a chance to make something set in the Star Wars universe is one that has gotten fans excited.
We don’t know what the story of this new Star Wars game will be, or even what era of the franchise it will be set in, but this is hopefully a sign that a higher number of Star Wars video games will be announced and released in the next several years.