A third DICE-developed Star Wars: Battlefront game was reportedly planned, but canceled due to licensing costs. Although DICE's previous two reboots of the classic Star Wars Battlefront series were met with an icy reception among Star Wars fans at launch, 2017’s Star Wars Battlefront II won players over after addressing its once-problematic microtransactions and expanding itself with a plethora of additional DLC content over the past four years. A promotion with the Epic Games Store saw Battlefront II offered for free on the online marketplace, which considerably bolstered the game's player count and helped scores of fans see how much the title had improved over the years.
Following this disastrous launch and surprising redemption, discussions among fans soon turned to a potential third installment of DICE’s Star Wars Battlefront series, but all signs so far have pointed to such a game either being put on EA's back burner or canceled outright. Earlier this year, EA revealed that it has no new Star Wars announcements planned for the remainder of 2021. This is supported by Disney recently branching out to other publishers like Ubisoft - effectively ending EA’s status as the sole licensee of Star Wars video games since 2015’s divisive Star Wars Battlefront. Additionally, a leak by gaming journalist Tom Henderson indicated that DICE is shifting its focus toward the next Battlefield, meaning that if a new Star Wars Battlefront game was in the works, it would be quite some time before players would ever see it.
Now, Tom Henderson has come forward with more bad news regarding a hypothetical Star Wars Battlefront III on his Twitter page. Yesterday, he revealed that DICE pitched an idea for this game to EA, but the publisher ultimately shot it down due to licensing costs. Henderson claims that one DICE developer told him that “it takes 20% more sales to make the same money” and that this, combined with several key members of DICE’s Star Wars Battlefront II development staff departing from the company over the past year, were key factors in EA not going forward with a Star Wars Battlefront III for the time being.
However, Henderson also notes that EA still has at least two other Star Wars games in development, although these are said to be more centered around a single-player narrative rather than the multiplayer approach of Star Wars Battlefront. One of these is likely the planned sequel to 2019’s Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, a Respawn-developed action title that is regarded by many to be the best game to come from EA and Disney’s shaky Star Wars partnership to date. In the meantime, Ubisoft is currently working on a yet-untitled open-world Star Wars game, and Detroit: Become Human developer Quantic Dream is supposedly developing a title set in the era of the High Republic.
EA has recently indicated that it wishes to move away from developing licensed games in favor of in-house franchises like Battlefront, and the recent reveal that the publisher reportedly canceled DICE's planned Star Wars Battlefront III due to licensing costs seems to add credence to that theory. Of course, Tom Henderson notes that EA and DICE could resume production on the next Star Wars Battlefront game in the future, but recent developments suggest that it might not be for a few years - if it even happens at all.
Source: Tom Henderson/Twitter
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