Star Wars Battlefront 2 Coming in 2017, Annual Releases Will Follow

Electronic Arts will be releasing Star Wars: Battlefront 2 some time in 2017, according to statements made during a recent earnings conference call. Battlefront 2 will be followed by Visceral Games' planned Star Wars title in 2018. After that, EA expects to release a Star Wars game each year.

"We'll most likely have at least one Star Wars title a year over the next three to four years," said EA chief financial officer Blake Jorgensen during the call. "Next year, we will see Star Wars Battlefront back, with bigger and better worlds, because we now have the new movies to work off, not just the historical movies that we used before. We also are working on a Star Wars action game, that part of the Motive team is working on as well as the Visceral team, and that's most likely the following year."

"The cadence should be at least every year, along with the cadence of the large and small movies that Disney's doing - relative to - or size of movies that Disney's doing relative to Star Wars," added Jorgensen. "Then obviously, we'll continue to layer in mobile titles where possible as well, to try to have a diverse Star Wars activity from shooters, all the way through action and strategy, but at the same time, taking advantage of all the new great IP that's being developed by our partners at Disney."

Battlefront 2 will likely feature locations from Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Star Wars: Rogue One, and perhaps even Star Wars: Episode VIII. The Star Wars title from Visceral Games is being led by creative director Amy Hennig, who previously worked on Naughty Dog's Uncharted series. EA's new Motive Studios is helping with that project, while also working on its own open-world action game. The company also recently announced that Titanfall developer Respawn Entertainment is working on a Star Wars game, led by God of War III director Stig Asmussen. Assuming the games come as they were announced, the schedule will be: Star Wars Battlefront 2 in 2017, Visceral Project in 2018, and Respawn Project in 2019.

EA's contract with Lucasfilm is multi-year, but there was no given end date. It seems as if EA wants to get as much out of the contract as possible, especially given the sales success of the Battlefront reboot. With Jorgensen's mention of "three to four years", it's likely the contract will be up for renewal in 2020. Of course, if EA continues to put out successful Star Wars titles, I can't see either company not agreeing to a renewal.