EA Canceled the New Star Wars Game It Was Developing

EA recently announced earlier today that it would lay off approximately 5% of its global workforce as part of a restructuring plan that will see approximately 670 jobs lost. At the same time, EA CEO Andrew Wilson announced in an email to employees that the publisher would be canceling some games to focus on and strengthen its own brands and would be “stepping away” from the development of future games based on licensed IPs. This decision led to the cancellation of the new Star Wars game.

One of the games canceled as a result of this change was an unannounced Star Wars first-person shooter that was in early development at Apex Legends and Star Wars Jedi developer Respawn Entertainment. The decision was recently confirmed by EA Entertainment president Laura Miele in a statement to VGC, where Miele explained that Respawn's fans are most excited about the Jedi series and the developer's "rich library of owned brands."

Miele said in his statement about their decision : “When we looked at Respawn's portfolio over the last few months, we saw that the games that our players are most excited about are Jedi and the rich brand library that Respawn has. Knowing this, we decided to move away from early development of a Star Wars FPS action game and focus our efforts on new projects based on our owned brands while providing support for existing games.” he said.

What Would the New Star Wars Game Be Like?

While it hasn't been definitively confirmed, it seems extremely likely that Miele is referring to the Mandalorian first-person shooter, which was rumored to be in development earlier this month. According to Insider Gaming, Respawn had plans to develop an FPS game that would build on the series' roots and focus on "style" and "mobility" more than anything else. It was also claimed that the game was a few years away from being released.

As for EA's other games, things seem to be going well for all of them right now. As reported by Gamesindustry.biz, a number of games in the works, such as EA Motive's Iron Man game and Cliffhanger Games' Black Panther game, as well as possibly future plans for the Star Wars Jedi series, were not affected by this change. There is currently no information on how many unannounced games from EA's many studios are affected.