EA and DICE’s Star Wars Battlefront will launch in holiday (aka Christmas) 2015, the publisher has announced, with the next round of proper announcements due in the spring. What’s that Yoda quote again? “Always in motion is the future”? Sorry, I couldn’t think of anything more apt.
Battlefront will be EA’s big shooter release for that winter, with Battlefield Hardline hitting on 17th March - the next Battlefield will arrive in winter 2016. “This provides us with a major first-person shooter title each year and allows us to focus on still increasing earnings progression in the coming years,” chief financial officer Blake Jorgensen explained in an earnings call, passed on bySeekingAlpha. “This also allows our Battlefield titles to enjoy the long life we have seen historically through our core gameplay and extended services.”
Later in the same call, CEO Andrew Wilson spoke warmly of EA’s partnership with Disney. “Again it’s a great IP, a fantastic relationship and we certainly have plans to do a number of different things as part of that relationship that are going to deliver great ways to interact with that IP for players,” he said.
“If you go back to the original announcement when we struck the deal with Disney, it’s clearly a multi-year franchise. Disney is looking for us to help support the broad effort of bringing back the Star Wars franchise, and it’s across mobile, social, tablets, online, consoles, across all venues. So you can imagine that we’re going to look for many ways to leverage the franchise and help that franchise grow over time.”
You probably already know that Visceral of Dead Space/Hardline fame and BioWare are working on Star Wars projects. Quite what these amount to has yet to be announced - here’s a round-up of possibilities from myself and Dan G.