Electronic Arts Shelves One Star Wars Game, Continues Work on Others

(Bloomberg) -- Electronic Arts Inc. shelved a Stars Wars video game the company was developing at one of its Canadian studios, but said its efforts on the series continue.

“As a natural part of the creative process, the great work by our team in Vancouver continues and will evolve into future Star Wars content and games,” the company said in an emailed statement Wednesday. “We’re fully committed to making more Star Wars games, we’re very excited about Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order from Respawn, and we’ll share more about our new projects when the time is right.”

The gaming website Kotaku said Tuesday that the company behind Madden NFL and The Sims had canceled the game after working on it since October 2017. Electronic Arts shares fell Wednesday, tumbling as much as 3.9 percent before rebounding to a loss of 0.4 percent at 2:01 p.m. in New York.

Respawn, a Los Angeles-based video-game studio owned by Electronic Arts, had unveiled details about another “Star Wars” title at last year’s E3 game conference. That title is due out later this year.

Walt Disney Co., which owns and makes the Star Wars movies, has largely quit making video games in favor of licensing its brands to other publishers. Redwood City, California-based Electronic Arts holds the license to several Star Wars games, including the Battlefront series.

To contact the reporter on this story: Christopher Palmeri in Los Angeles at cpalmeri1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Nick Turner at nturner7@bloomberg.net, Rob Golum

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.