In the odd bit of good news to start this month out, we have official confirmation a game is still in development.
As reported by Video Games Chronicle, the EA strategy game with the Star Wars license is still in active development. This was confirmed by the studio making the game, Bit Reactor.
Bit Reactor sent this tweet:
“Last week was difficult for the industry, and more so because of our strong relationships within the other teams at Respawn.
But for those asking, we are still hard at work, and our game was unaffected by last week’s news.”
EA announced the Star Wars strategy game and Bit Reactor, which is an independent studio, as the studio assigned to the project. However, no title or other details have been revealed about the project yet.
Bit Reactor was asked about this themselves in response to this tweet. To that, they simply replied, “As soon as it’s ready…”
For now, we don’t know much about this upcoming Star Wars strategy game. We do know that Bit Reactor have huge shoes to fill, as the Star Wars license has seen some good titles in that genre through the years, if they aren’t all that well known.
The most prominent among these that even casual fans may remember is 2001’s Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds. That title was based on The Phantom Menace, and subsequently, was one of many video games that was part of its strong marketing push. Even if you weren’t particularly fond of the Gungans and the droid grunts introduced in that movie, this title realized the large scope of the battles implied in that movie.
The most successful among these games seems to be 2006’s Star Wars: Empires at War. This title circles back to the original trilogy for its theme, but also has something else up to sleeve; it’s developer, Petroglyph Games, was composed of many former Westwood employees who had just left the company.
But now, Bit Reactor has an opportunity to exceed what Star Wars: Empires at War had accomplished. We now live in an era where developers had properly figured out how to bring strategy games to consoles, and subsequently, there is a feasible market for strategy games on consoles. Whether is grand scale strategy, or a good old RTS, this upcoming Star Wars strategy game could surprise gamers as the next big thing in Star Wars video games. It certainly helps that Baldur’s Gate 3’s success has turned the perception around on turn based Western video games.
Overall, this kind of message is welcome, and we hope to see more of it in the coming weeks, from developers who hope to still wow us with their magic and skill.