The lights are on
Curious to know the full story behind the canceled Star Wars Battlefront sequel? Free Radical Co-founder Steve Ellis recounts the decline of one of the UK’s best developers.
Earlier in the month, we got a peek at the Battlefront 3 game that never saw the light of day. Now Free Radical Co-founder Steve Ellis lays out the full story behind the game.
Speaking with GamesIndustry International, Ellis details how Free Radical went from releasing hit titles like TimeSplitters 1 and 2 to struggling through its development of Haze, and eventually talks about how Battlefront 3 got canceled.
“We were still at that time probably a year out from completing and releasing the first game and they asked us to sign up for the sequel,” recalled Ellis. “That was a big deal for us because it meant putting all our eggs in one basket. It was a critical decision - do we want to bet on LucasArts? And we chose to because things were going as well as they ever had. It was a project that looked like it would probably be the most successful thing we had ever done and they were asking us to make the sequel to it too. It seemed like a no-brainer.”
The full story is worth a read, and contains plenty of insight into the difficulties of game development.
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Such a shame seeing that Free Radical put so much heart into the development of this game, only to have all that hard work go to waste while we get TFU and SW Kinect.
Battlefront fans unite!
i am dying for a battlefront 3, hopefully another developer can pick it up!
Battlefront series RIP
Any chance of anyone else picking it up? :/
Wow. So sad.
Awe how I would of loved to see a Battlefront 3 :'(
You ditched Timesplitters 4 AND Star Wars: Battlefront III for Haze? That game was the shittiest ripoff of Halo I've ever seen. My older brother bought a used copy of that for $15 and it worked perfectly. It sucked so hard, we returned it the same day. You guys have made the worst business decisions I've ever seen. Go back to college you stupids douchebags.
that's a bummer..
I LOVED the Battlefront series. They were amazing and its sad that this one was cancelled. I really hope someone picks this project up. Along with a REAL Socom.
So a smaller, successfull developement team makes a deal with not one but two major publishers and ends up going out of business. WOW! I've never heard of such a thing happening before. What is this industry coming to?