One thing is painfully clear from recent moves by Disney: They have no earthly idea what the hell to do with LucasArts, especially its upcoming projects. At least that’s what we’re forced to conclude from how Star Wars: First Assault, a multiplayer FPS that’s supposedly an appetizer for a new Battlefront game, has suddenly become a ridiculously leaky ship.
Kotaku has a whole string of articles about the game in the last few days, and they’ve gotten a lot of stuff: Screenshots, videos, discussions with insiders, you name it.
The game is apparently a multiplayer first-person shooter set in the Star Wars universe, heading for a digital release; the game was first discovered when the cover art was released by mistake over Xbox Live. That honestly sounds like a license to mint money, but it’s worth remember that Disney… uh… kind of hates video games.
When we talked about the Disney/Lucasfilm deal, we said that Disney’s treatment of video games did not augur wonderful things for LucasArts, and honestly, Disney has done very, very little to alleviate that perception. Shutting down Junction Point just reinforces the problem.
By all accounts, Star Wars: First Assault is nearly done, and at a guess, all of this information hitting the Internet is a Hail Mary play: People internally are either putting out material to look for jobs when they get fired, or somebody on the team believes the only way the game, which was supposed to be in closed beta last year, will hit the Internet.
We hope it gets a shot. If the game is done, Disney can’t lose anything by releasing it digitally, and honestly, it looks like a lot of fun. Come on, Disney, you know you can do this.