Tuesday 11 June 2013

Electronic Arts Announces Star Wars: Battlefront's Return


Well, it seems that there is a God after all.

With the loss of LucasArts, cancellation of many promising titles and concern over the direction the franchise would be going in, Star Wars video game fans have been hard to placate of late. Between the teasers of the now gone 1313, First Assault and the seemingly long gone Battlefront 3, things were not looking good for the franchise. There have been so many hints of late of promising installments as the result of leaks and trailers and yet any loyalty has only been rewarded with sub-par titles. Star Wars Kinect anyone? 

Now it seems that Electronic Arts of all people might be the ones to finally turn this around.

Announced at their E3 press conference today, the publisher confirmed that they would not only be bringing back Star Wars: Battlefront but it would be for the next console generation. Made with entirely new technology and off of the Frostbite 3 engine, the much beloved series looks set to make a return. While little information beyond this was revealed to the public, a short pre rendered teaser trailer gave some sign of what is to come. With the icy setting of Hoth with the iconic AT-ATs and Snowspeeders it seems they are set upon getting the interest of a new potential audience.

The obvious question now is if EA can live up to this. With the success of the Battlefield franchise over the years the publisher has shown it has a hold on the market for large-scale third person military shooters. The obvious problem with this is that EA itself is not the one to create the games, only the publishers under them. Furthermore, with all the bad habits we have seen from them ranging from rushing release schedules to directly interfering with development and genre of a title, the question is if they can be trusted to do things right.
Still, EA has acknowledged their poor PR among customers and increasingly negative reputation. Perhaps this is a chance they will truly take wholeheartedly to turn around and change their image.

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