EA to avoid film tie-ins with Star Wars deal

Electronic Arts is not interested in games based directly on the Star Wars films themselves but games set in the franchise's universe in general.

EA chief financial officer Blake Jorgensen pointed out the depth of the Star Wars franchise at the UBS Global Technology Conference earlier this week and expressed the company's interest in exploring the extended Star Wars universe.

'The beauty of the Star Wars is it's so broad and so deep you don't have to do a movie game,' said Jorgensen. 'You can do a game that's very focused on the world that's been created around Star Wars.'

Although EA has less interest in games that are direct film tie-ins, Jorgensen does however mention that the company intends to benefit from Disney's marketing prowess which it will bring to bear on the Star Wars series as they approach the release of the next film.

It has been revealed that the deal EA has with Disney and Lucasfilm will run for the next ten years and work has already begun on building early stages of various titles over at DICE.

One of the confirmed titles is a new Star Wars Battlefront title which is aiming for a 2015 release.

Disney bought the rights to Star Wars in October 2012 and has committed to a December 2015 release for Episode VII. Very few details about the project have been revealed other than the fact that casting has begun and deals have been sold with some of the original actors.

The deal struck between Disney, LucasArts and EA follows on form the effective closure of LucasArts earlier this year. In the process, projects Star Wars: First Assault and Star Wars 1313 were cancelled.

Details of 1313 later emerged, showing that it was going to feature bounty hunter Boba Fett and that it should have tied in to a live-action TV series that was in production at the time.