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EA Acquires Star Wars Video Game License


Hyperion5182
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http://www.blastr.com/2013-5-6/so-disneys-master-plan-future-star-wars-video-games

I....i dont know what to say to this other than....

And since the website shortened the URL...

Disney's SW video games...are being transferred to EA...

http://www.nooooooooooooooo.com/

:'(

This is....Horrible. I...was afraid things were bad i had no idea they were this bad. I hope Stan Lee has enough control left over Marvel to prevent a similar disaster.

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I just can't get all that depressed about this. I mean, it was clear Disney wanted to cash in on Star Wars with market saturation, and EA is a fantastic company to help them do that. Seriously, EA has saturation down to a science. Of course EA's going to make mediocre-to-garbage games, and they'll sell like mad. But it's not like Star Wars has a great track record in gaming in the first place.

The good independent series (Jedi Knight, X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, Knights of the Old Republic), are balanced out with a half-dozen crappy spin-offs per movie (Jedi Power Battles, every 1990s 2D platformer). And of course there's always Force Unleashed versus its sequel, or the amount of unfinished content in KOTOR 2, to prove that EA would be far from the first company to completely screw up a guaranteed hit license. EA just does it so well, and so consistently (SimCity, Dragon Age 2, Dead Space 3, their entire sports game lineup), that it's easy to think the bar has fallen so far. Nope, it wasn't really that high to begin with.

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I just can't get all that depressed about this. I mean, it was clear Disney wanted to cash in on Star Wars with market saturation, and EA is a fantastic company to help them do that. Seriously, EA has saturation down to a science. Of course EA's going to make mediocre-to-garbage games, and they'll sell like mad. But it's not like Star Wars has a great track record in gaming in the first place.

The good independent series (Jedi Knight, X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, Knights of the Old Republic), are balanced out with a half-dozen crappy spin-offs per movie (Jedi Power Battles, every 1990s 2D platformer). And of course there's always Force Unleashed versus its sequel, or the amount of unfinished content in KOTOR 2, to prove that EA would be far from the first company to completely screw up a guaranteed hit license. EA just does it so well, and so consistently (SimCity, Dragon Age 2, Dead Space 3, their entire sports game lineup), that it's easy to think the bar has fallen so far. Nope, it wasn't really that high to begin with.

YES. You summed up my points. I was talking about this at Uni today with a couple of Mass Effect fans (who love the entire series barring the ending of the third). Both of whom were waiting for SW: Battlefront 3. EA makes that a possibility, and they are excited. I mentioned Command and Conquer going from a great series to univerally hated, with the hated part made by EA. (the fall from the original to Tiberian Twilight is massive) They weren't quite so happy, but were still more happy than you'd expect.

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It's funny to watch half the internet change face so quickly. They want from completely freaking out about how even EA is over SimCity and Mass Effect, to saying "All if forgiven if you can give us Battlefront 3".

It's a very clever plan on EA's part, indeed. First: We release a game riddled with DRM and ad-supported content. Refuse to give it an offline mode. Who cares about the server stability? All the nerds on the internet will FREAK OUT!

THEN we'll release a Star Wars game that they've been salivating over. Give them LAN play. Offline mode. We may even release it on Steam!

THEN we'll release MORE DRM-riddled, ad-supported games while they're distracted with Star Wars! By the time they figure it out, we'll have locked them into Battlefront's III-VIII.

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"I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened." - Obi-Wan

But srsly the studios they're mentioned aren't that bad, I'm happy to wait on see on this one. They're still jerks for closing Lucas Arts though...

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Now, I'm not as mad about this as some other folks. I mean, yeah fuck Disney for screwing with the franchise and giving the license to...the dark side; but were the Star Wars games ever that good to begin with? I know people like Battlefront, but I've never played that. The majority of Star Wars games I've played are fighter pilot mission based games. And there were a couple of those ones where you play a sith apprentice or something, and those were interesting concepts, but were dull games imo.

I'm just happy that lego Star Wars is still goin' strong :) Lego Star Wars is the shit! :D

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I dunno why EA gets as much flak as they do. They arent too terrible of a publisher. They've never done anything wrong by me outside of releasing a mediocre game or Army of Two (yuk yuk yuk). In the past EA has gone out of their to provide me with keys for games I have had physical copies of but long since lost the key to. And that puts them ahead of Ubisoft and Activision by a huge margin.

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2) TIE Fighter sequel / reboot

Careful what you wish for. Remember the gaming era we are in.

"Lieutenant, as the second Death Star's engineers are doubling their efforts and their budget, our fighter wings have not received their traditional funding. All craft are now equipped with a functional but unbecoming pair of laser cannons and four missles. Individual pilots will now personally ensure their craft is outfitted with armaments befitting the operation and the might of our glorious Empire, by purchasing weapons and advanced systems with their own TIE Fighter Points."

  • Quad-lasers (99 TFP)
  • Ion cannons (149 TFP)
  • Proton torpedos (2 ea., 29 TFP)
  • TIE Defender hull, cosmetic upgrade (599 TFP)

"As a final note, again due to the lack of resources outside of the Planetary Destruction division, even these purchases will break down between missions and need to be replaced. Good flying, Lieutenant."

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I dunno why EA gets as much flak as they do. They arent too terrible of a publisher. They've never done anything wrong by me outside of releasing a mediocre game or Army of Two (yuk yuk yuk). In the past EA has gone out of their to provide me with keys for games I have had physical copies of but long since lost the key to. And that puts them ahead of Ubisoft and Activision by a huge margin.

As a publisher they have a tendency to interfere with the development of games by implementing rules about integrated-DRM (SimCity's always-on debacle), DLC (Mass Effect 3's "From Ashes" day-one DLC being so integral to the story), stifling creativity by allowing marketing to dictate artistic decisions (Dead Space 3 switching gears from moody survival horror to yet-another-third-person action game) and in-game real-money transactions (Mass Effect 3 multiplayer, Dead Space 3, etc.).

It's not that they make bad games (personally I'm a big fan of Mass Effect 3), it's just that generally they have a lot of anti-consumer practices that kludge things up.

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I know I'm committing a cardinal sin against nerdamentalist dogma here, but does anyone* feel like waiting until any games are out and playable BEFORE freaking out?

I don't understand how Star Wars fans can still get butthurt over developments like these when that same dogma dictates the series peaked like 30 years ago. Anyone remember how horrible it was that Nintendo was leaving the Metroid franchise to an American game studio in Texas? Now we have the Metroid Prime trilogy. Anyone remember when there couldn't exist a good Batman game without tearing the universe a new quantum anus? Now we have the Batman Arkham series.

The games that came out of EA have all the potential in the world to be awesome, but who would like to remember conventional wisdom of "not judging a book by its cover" instead of seeing STAR WARS + EA = THE WORST FUCKING THING TO HAPPEN TO ANYTHING IMPORTANT EVER.

* - aside from the last 9 or so replies. I took a break in the middle of writing this and came back and many who were sensible about it. :P

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I can never be mad at EA because of Dante's Inferno, Shadows of the Damned, and others... nobody else was going to publish those and they're unlike other game experiences... that kind of support for innovation and storytelling should be admired...

As for Sim City, Mass Effect 3, and stuff... I didn't get those so it didn't affect me at all.

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I can never be mad at EA because of Dante's Inferno... and they're unlike other game experiences...

Uhhh, Dante's Inferno was pretty much the shittiest God of War clone it could be. It was God of War except without any of the fun parts, and a huge floppy dick swinging around during the final battle. Had the dick repeatedly slapped you in the face, it would have been even better, because that is about the quality and maturity the game was - a big, fully rendered and textured blue dick smacking you in the face.

To say nothing of the astoundingly awful marketing for Dante's Inferno. I tried to find numbers on the sales of the game and on marketing costs, and the most I can find is an extreme drop in aggressive marketing by EA after the whole circus of Dante's Inferno, which thankfully suggests the whole thing backfired.

The games that came out of EA have all the potential in the world to be awesome, but who would like to remember conventional wisdom of "not judging a book by its cover" instead of seeing STAR WARS + EA = THE WORST FUCKING THING TO HAPPEN TO ANYTHING IMPORTANT EVER.

EA's track record right now could generously be described as "putrid." The Sim City launch and their subsequent response, The Old Republic and its rather...bumbled launch, and a shift to free to play so awkward and forced it blew out the clutch, a general attitude of contempt and disdain towards people who voice complaints - did you see their response to that whole worst company fiasco? They blamed homophobia for it.

As far as Star Wars goes, EA is probably the one company that could make a game that's more of a waste of money and time than Force Unleashed. I can't wait for a game that's nothing but fucking Hoth land battles with paid DLC and map packs.

Edited by Lyrai
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I can never be mad at EA because of Dante's Inferno, Shadows of the Damned, and others... nobody else was going to publish those and they're unlike other game experiences... that kind of support for innovation and storytelling should be admired...

As for Sim City, Mass Effect 3, and stuff... I didn't get those so it didn't affect me at all.

Those games you like are from a couple of years ago. EA as a publisher doesn't really take risks like that anymore.

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