On top of a new Indiana Jones game coming from Bethesda and Wolfenstein developer Machine Games, now Ubisoft have announced an open world Star Wars game (apparently from the team behind The Division?), both under a revived Lucasfilm Games label.
I can't help but think of Infogrames' Atari rebrand with this, but at the same time they appear to be enlisting some heavy hitters to produce titles. Interesting that both announcements so far have been from established publishers, which indicates Lucasfilm Games is more of a licensing venture than a publisher in their own right.
It's probably a good thing as far as Star Wars is concerned. EA have had exclusivity over the Star Wars licence for 8 years and in that time they've produced a sum total of four games: two Battlefronts, Jedi Fallen Order and Squadrons. They're all good, but it feels like there's more that could be done with the license, especially with the levels of interest around the property thanks to the Mandalorian and all the spin-off shows that are due over the next couple of years.
Indiana Jones I'm less fussed about; not sure that's entirely necessary when you've already got Nathan Drake and Lara Croft. (Yes, I know they were both straight Indy rip-offs originally, but what actually is there to Indy anyway apart from a hat and a whip?)
An Ubisoft take on Star Wars could be interesting. But what I really want is Koei Tecmo to do Star Wars Warriors - give me Luke Skywalker spinning through the battlefield sending thousands of stormtroopers flying, and I'll be happy.
I'm wondering if, now that they're all under the Disney mega-umbrella, the Lucasfilm Games brand might also take on some Marvel games licenses as well.
If we're talking dream ideas, with IO branching out on the Bond license, I'm wondering what a Star Wars Hitman game would look like.
The lack of decent Marvel MCU games over the last few years feels like a huge missed opportunity. The one Avengers game they did manage to get out managed to appear at the one point in the last ten years that there were no films out and no-one was talking about Marvel. Bet they're looking at Sony's Spider-Man, which wasn't even specifically MCU, and kicking themselves.
I'm assuming the current crop of Star Wars games will still get sequels. Fallen Order 2 must surely be deep in development by now and there's bound to be a new Battlefront - although what they can put in it that wasn't already in the last one remains to be seen.
Their dedication to secrecy around plots probably hasn't helped with getting tie-in games together – Disney lost out on a shitload of merch opportunities with The Mandalorian because they didn't want photos of Baby Yoda toys leaking from manufacturers.
Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 was okay.
