The Star Wars universe, before Disney came along and wiped it out, was pretty much divided in two. There were the movies, and there was the Expanded Universe, which was pretty much everything else. Going forward, however, it appears that any video game won’t be part of the EU, but will instead be straight-up canon, in line with the plot of the films.
At least that’s the news from VG24/7, and it actually applies across all media: From this point forward, any comics, novels, games or other licensed material with a plot will be part of the main canon, as dictated by the Star Wars Story Group.
There are good points and bad points to this approach, some of which we touched on yesterday. We doubt DICE will have a problem with Ewok And Gungan Murder Simulator, er, Star Wars: Battlefront, for example. But it might also create a lot of trouble trying to make a game along the lines of The Force Unleashed or the seemingly dead 1313. The best Star Wars games, at least recently, have really been about as far from Luke, Leia and the smugglers as you can get; maybe they cameo, but it’s mostly some new guy running around, blowing stuff up.
Similarly, considering how Disney treats video games, it’s a bit worrying that developers will be under the gloved thumb of the Mouse just that much more. We’ll be fine if the games aren’t canon, Disney; we’d much rather they actually be good.