The company never met deadlines, always sought more resources

Dec 5, 2012 12:56 GMT  ·  By

A source claiming to have insider knowledge from publisher LucasArts says that the claims about the quality of Star Wars: Battlefront III have been exaggerated and that the quality of the game was mediocre when the company decided to cancel it.

The source has told Gamespot that, “This 99 percent complete stuff is just bullshit. A generous estimate would be 75 percent of a mediocre game.”

“We were desperate for a next-gen follow-up to Battlefront (the claim that the project was sabotaged for financial reasons is ludicrous. The franchise was a huge money maker at the time).”

It added, “At this point, I felt that Free Radical was akin to a Ponzi scheme where time and budget from the next game was being used to finish the previous, late, title.”

Star Wars: Battlefront III was supposed to be the biggest entry in the series to date and would have revolutionized the franchise, according to ex-Free Radical developers who spoke about it.

Steve Ellis, who is one of the co-founders of the developer, recently claimed that the game was 99 percent complete and that only a solid Quality Assurance process was required before actual launch.

LucasArts was unwilling to give Free Radical the resources it required and that resulted in the cancelation of the project and the demise of the studio.

Since then, a number of other companies, including Spark Entertainment, have been linked to Star Wars: Battlefront III, but LucasArts has never officially confirmed that the game is in development.

The core structure of the franchise is similar to that of modern Battlefield games from DICE, using characters, vehicles and weapons taken from the highly successful Star Wars series.

It’s highly unlikely that the title will ever be launched, especially considering that LucasArts is re-evaluating all its game development after it has been acquired by Disney.