lucasarts posts

Epic Games' Unreal Engine 3 game development tools just got a new buyer. The company announced today it has signed a multi-year agreement with LucasArts. The agreement is to use Unreal Engine as the basis for "multiple projects" at the developer/publisher. There is no word on which games will use the engine and financial details were not disclosed.

LucasArts has used previous versions of Epic's Unreal Engine before. The most notable use was with LucasArts' Star Wars Repubic Commando tactical shooter which was first released way back in 2005. Rumors of a sequel to that game have popped up on the net from time to time.

[Via email press release]

Without a doubt the most anticipated MMO game launch in several years is Star Wars The Old Republic. BioWare's upcoming game has a lot to live up to and today a financial analyst says that the game could generate over 1 million subscribers in its first 12 months.

Gamasutra reports that Janco analyst Mike Hickey predicts that the game's sales will "far exceed" the 500,000 to 1 million sales mark but that the game's continued development "must be perfectly orchestrated" to keep its subscriber base from going down. Hickey predicts that at the 1 million subscriber level, Star Wars The Old Republic will bring in $161.9 million in revenues and $35 million in profits during its first year. The game is currently scheduled to be released during the second half of 2011.

Star Wars The Old Republic hasn't been released yet but BioWare's long awaited MMO is already the subject of two prose novels (Star Wars: The Old Republic: Fatal Alliance and Star Wars: The Old Republic: Deceived). Today the games official web site has announced a third novel is in works and it features a character from BioWare's original Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic single player RPG.

That character, which some of you have guess from the novel's cover art on the right, is Revan. One of the most popular characters from BioWare's first Star Wars game, author Drew Karpyshyn (who helped create the character) will show the Jedi Knight/Sith after the events of the first game and though and after the events of that game's sequel. While the novel will take place well before the events of The Old Republic MMO Karpyshyn says in an interview, " ... the events of this book have a major impact on shaping The Old Republic universe." Look for Star Wars The Old Republic Revan to be released later this year.

GoG.com had a number of announcements today at its streaming press conference including big hints about upcoming publishers:

• GoG.com is not only selling the only DRM-free version of The Witcher 2, but starting May 10 people who pre-order the game from the site can start pre-loading the fantasy RPG sequel before its released on May 17. GoG.com will be the only digital download service that will offer a pre-load of the game.
• GoG.com's sales went up 163 percent in 2010 compared to 2009. No specific sales numbers were mentioned.
• Later this spring GoG.com will get some new features including a new game downloader that will have multi-threading features for large downloads and an error checker that will check the download for corruption issues every 10 MBs. Another new feature will add private messages to the web site.
• At the end of the presentation, five big publishers were shown on the screen; Electronic Arts, Take Two Interactive, Square Enix, LucasArts and Microsoft. The press conference said that one of those five publishers has signed a deal with GoG.com to bring 25 of its classic games to the site this summer. Two more of the above publishers are in talks with GoG.com to bring some of their own games to the download service as well.

While last week's update on the Star Wars The Old Republic web site may have been an April Fool's joke, this week's update for the upcoming MMO is quite real and very detailed. Georg Zoeller, the Principal Lead Combat Designer for the game, gives out even more info about the advanced character classes in the game.

The update shows how the classes skill trees work to give the classes more abilities, with lots of examples. The blog update also shows how developer BioWare uses server metrics to evaluate how the advanced character classes work for players, including movement heat maps.

LucasArts is still interested in internal game development, at least according to its hiring moves. This week the publisher announced that it has hired Tim Longo to join LucasArts to work on an unannounced game. Longo previously worked at Crystal Dynamics as the creative head of the developer's Tomb Raider game franchise. Longo previously worked at LucasArts as well including the creative director of Star Wars: Republic Commando.

LucasArts previously had two periods of mass layoffs in 2010, one in September and another in November. At the moment the only announced game on the publisher's plate is the long awaited MMO Star Wars The Old Republic which it is co-publishing with Electronic Arts.

When Star Wars Galaxies came out, the MMO made the huge mistake of making players work extremely hard to achieve the status of Jedi Knight. That won't be the case for BioWare's upcoming and long awaited MMO Star Wars The Old Republic. In the newest trailer released for the game, we get to see how the Jedi character progresses in the game via different types of armor.

But that's not important. What's important is that this pure gameplay clip shows lots of Jedi action with single and dual light sabers making short work of a Jedi's enemies. It doesn't get better than that.

More LEGO Star Wars 3 trailers! Much like the last ones, they portray the goofy, childlike humor of the game while not really showing any gameplay. Good to give your kid a laugh, perhaps, but we didn't find them particularly funny. The depict, in order: Yoda crash-landing, a bunch of stormtroopers buffing up before a battle, and Anakin trying to take out a couple of troop transports. They are completely tame, and are even accompanied by the plastic clinks of normal LEGOs.

Download HD LEGO Star Wars 3: The Clone Wars 'Yoda Backstroke' Trailer
Download HD LEGO Star Wars 3: The Clone Wars 'Troopers Working Out' Trailer
Download HD LEGO Star Wars 3: The Clone Wars 'Vehicles Reveal' Trailer
Check out all LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars downloads

Star Wars The Old Republic let players sign up to be considered for the beta test of the upcoming MMO game and so far close to 1.5 million players have done just that, according to what an Electronic Arts executive said in a recent meeting.

EA CFO Eric Brown told the audience this week at the Lazard Capital Markets Technology and Media Day that the high beta sign up numbers for the game are, " ... a great indicator in the interest level in the franchise." Gamasutra reports that Brown would not say when the open beta for the game would launch but did say that the game is not expected to be released before the end of June.

Star Wars The Old Republic has been promoted since the MMO was first announced as a story driven game. That's very evident in this latest in-game footage from developer BioWare's title. This very long (over 16 minutes) video is a full gameplay walkthrough of one of the game's Flashpoint missions.

This particular mission is designed for players of level 32 and requires four players to undertake. Narrated by BioWare's Dallas Dickinson, the video gives you a highly detailed look at how one of these Flashpoint story missions will be like before Star Wars The Old Republic is released late in 2011.