LucasArts Shut Down.

[BLZBUB]

 Kotaku has announced that Disney has laid off the staff and cancelled all projects at LucasArts. Kotaku reporter Jason Schreier prints that his 'source' says that LucasArts' current and future games ( Star Wars: First Assault and Star Wars: 1313 ) were "effectively dead forever."

Over at Game Informer, their "representative from LucasArts" said:

"It is worth noting that we are looking for proven external partners who can help us provide video games to our fans. We still believe in the video game industry, we still will provide Star Wars games, we're just looking at different models rather than internal production... They're evaluating everything. There's always a possibility that it [Star Wars 1313] can still come out via licensing."

[Sorripto]

I saw that.  The only saving grace is that Disney will continue the name but have all games externally developed.  This is an end to one of the better game developers of the last thirty years.

[Jeff T]

Everyone booted out of the airlock...

(Maybe Darth Vader or a sith Lord is controlling Disney) 

Muuuuhwwwwwwwwaaaaaaaaaaaaa 

[Jureth]

I saw this, and truth be told I'm not shedding too many tears...LucasArts has put out largely crap recently, in my humble opinion of course. I would venture that before The Old Republic (and I'm betting most of that was Bioware) the last decent game they released was probably the first The Force Unleashed game. Before that you have to go back to KOTOR and the Jedi Knight series.

Their hits were few and far between, and I will be happy to see other developers involved with Star Wars. I feel sorry for anyone who lost their job, but as an entity LucasArts didn't have much gas in the tank.

[Sorripto]

Lucasarts had a string of very successful hits for almost 20 years.  From Maniac Mansion and Secret of Monkey Island to the X-Wing/Tie Fighter series and Sam and Max later on.  What they stopped doing was making games and instead they started producing other peoples games.  The last solely Lucasarts game was Force Unleashed II the rest of their hits including KOTOR and Battlefront were made by other companies.

[Adam Wilcox]

Do you realize that during the entire life cycles of both PS3, and XBOX360, the only thing they put out was Clone Wars, Lego Star Wars, Star Wars Kinect, and 2 mildly interesting Force Unleashed Games?  I used to host a podcast on the subject and none of us could ever figure out how a company could go from being one of the best to just asking for failure.  Sad but not surprised either.  It's been circling down the drain ever since they stopped making the Dark Forces/Jedi Knight series.