EA cancels yet another Star Wars game; Shifting focus on next-gen title

EA has had a pretty rough time figuring out how to effectively make use of the Star Wars video game license. They started out on the right foot by rebooting the beloved Battlefront series… but that failed to resonate with fans. They followed it up with an even more poorly received sequel which was slammed for its controversial monetization, a lackluster campaign, and more.

To make matters worse, EA canceled Visceral Games’ highly anticipated single-player Star Wars title by closing the studio entirely which ruffled the feathers of fans everywhere. Now, the future of the brand remains unclear with only Respawn’s Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order on the horizon but not much is known about it at the moment outside of a few basic details.

After Visceral shut down, EA Vancouver began developing a new Star Wars game that was somewhat similar to what Visceral was developing… but now that has also been canceled. Kotaku is reporting EA Vancouver’s game, codenamed Orca, was an open-world game that would’ve kept some assets from Visceral’s game and followed a similar premise but was a new game otherwise.

Players would’ve assumed the role of a scoundrel or bounty hunter and explore different open-world planets as well as work with different factions from the vast sci-fi universe. Orca was ultimately canned by EA in favor of developing a smaller scale Star Wars title that can release sooner than Orca’s planned release window.

This new unknown title has no details at the moment but is reportedly slated for late 2020 which would line-up with around the time of the launch of next-gen consoles according to Kotaku. Sources at EA Vancouver are hopeful that Orca is simply shelved and could be revived once they finish their new project but that seems to just be internal speculation.

As of right now, EA is expected to release Respawn’s Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order this holiday season following a full detail blowout at Star Wars Celebration or E3 this year.