Disney and EA teaming up to make use of the Star Wars licence

Things got a little scary after Disney bought out LucasFilm last year, acquiring the rights to all of LucasArts' games before shutting down the studio for good.

for good. What would become of classics like Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, and Knights of the Old Republic? Well, we've got our first development—the House of Mouse has signed a deal with EAto develop and publish games based on the Star Wars licence.

EA intends to build Star Wars games for "all interactive platforms and the most popular game genres." According to EA Labels President Frank Gibeau, powerhouse studios DICE and Visceral will be joining BioWare in their work on the franchise. "The new experiences we create may borrow from films," he says, "but the games will be entirely original with all new stories and gameplay."

This comes as good news, kind of, to those who worried about Disney's focus on mobile gaming (one such worrier being Ron Gilbert, Monkey Island creator, himself). With three of the world's top studios named, we can be fairly certain that their talent will be working on some pretty large-scale games, and we might even see something equaling the greatness of 2003's Knights of the Old Republic.

BioWare's latest, however, wasn't exactly an instant success—Star Wars: The Old Republic adopted a free-to-play modelnot even a year after its release. I do wonder if there's a bit of fatigue around the franchise—is there a limit to the number of Star Wars games we can play before wookies and ewoks become tiresome?

Unfortunately, there's no word on what Disney will be doing with other licences such as Monkey Island, so we'll have to be content with this Star Wars news for now.