Disney closes down LucasArts

Following Disney's purchase of Lucasfilm, the future of LucasArts - the games division - has been up in the air. Reports have stated that development on Star Wars 1313 was suspended late last year, and we didn't quite know what plans the entertainment giant had for the division. Now we know. Disney are closing down LucasArts.

"After evaluating our position in the games market, we've decided to shift LucasArts from an internal development to a licensing model, minimizing the company's risk while achieving a broader portfolio of quality Star Wars games. As a result of this change, we've had layoffs across the organization. We are incredibly appreciative and proud of the talented teams who have been developing our new titles."

This also confirms the cancellation of Star Wars 1313 and Star Wars: First Assault, even if there is a slim chance these titles could be farmed out to new developers.

It should be noted that while this is the official death of LucasArts, the label has been having a hard time in the most recent years and could be said to have gone through a number of reincarnations. It gave up on Star Wars: The Old Republic after EA purchased Bioware (probably a wise decision that saved them some money), and the last internally developed title to see the light of day was Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II and the last published game was Kinect Star Wars. The same could be said of Disney Interactive, and perhaps Disney are simply not confident spending large amounts of money trying to gain a foothold in the video game business. These days Disney only holds three development studios, Avalanche Software, Wideload Games, and Gamestar - with only one (Avalanche) focused on big budget console development (Disney Infinity).