New open-world Star Wars game announced by Ubisoft and Massive Entertainment
If there’s any company out there that knows its open-world games, it would be Ubisoft. With their success on the Assassin’s Creed Franchise, they’re looking ready to take on a new challenge as developers Massive Entertainment (The Division 2) have entered into a partnership with Lucasfilm games to work on a new open-world Star Wars game.
According to a report from Wired, this is the first time that a Star Wars game will be developed by someone outside of EA since 2012. This title is still very early in development, and no other details like characters and setting / timeline has been decided on, but Massive Entertainment have already started recruiting personnel to work on the game. Serving as creative director will be Julian Gerighty from The Division 2 and The Crew, and the game will reportedly be using the Snowdrop Engine, which was used in games such as The Division and Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle.
EA reportedly has a 10 year Star Wars exclusivity deal, but according to the report, “it seems like either that was misstated or the clock has run out early.” EA is still free to create Star Wars games, but Lucasfilm games is “free to seek other partners.”
“The Star Wars galaxy is an amazing source of motivation for our teams to innovate and push the boundaries of our medium. Building new worlds, characters and stories that will become lasting parts of the Star Wars lore is an incredible opportunity for us, and we are excited to have our Ubisoft Massive studio working closely with Lucasfilm Games to create an original Star Wars adventure that is different from anything that has been done before.” says Yves Guillemot, Ubisoft Co-Founder and CEO
This announcement comes hot on the heels of another Lucasfilm collaboration, which is a new Indiana Jones game in partnership with Bethesda and MachineGames from Wolefenstein fame.