Battlefront 3 was never greenlit by EA, new singleplayer games coming

DICE's original Battlefront 3 project was never greenlit at Electronic Arts, but the publisher is working on multiple new Star Wars games.

EA hasn't had the best track record with Star Wars games. First it cancelled Project Ragtag and closed down Visceral Games in 2017. Then it cancelled two separate Star Wars games from EA Vancouver: Project Orca, a live-based open-world game, in 2019, and Project Viking, an open-world Battlefront spin-off in 2020. Instead EA Motive released Star Wars Squadrons last year.

At one point most of EA's studios were working on a Star Wars project (except for BioWare, who was knee-deep in Mass Effect Andromeda). DICE wanted to fill the gaps with Battlefront 3 and pitched the project to EA. According to reporter Tom Henderson, EA said no. There's a lot of reasons for this. Disney is apparently charging high licensing fees for EA (Disney collects royalties on all revenues and game sales for licensed Star Wars products), Jedi: Fallen Order's massive success changed how EA sees singleplayer games, upkeeping live games is tough, and making Star Wars games is very hard. Plus EA wants to reserve DICE for Battlefield 2042 and the future of the Battlefield games-as-a-platform service.

So what is EA working on? We know Respawn is making Jedi: Fallen Order 2, which is likely to release in 2023 or thereabouts. EA has also said that it's making multiple new Star Wars games but no announcements have been made.

Check below for a chronicled timeline of coverage to get a better idea of what EA is up to:

• January 2020 - Jedi: Fallen Order's success changed how EA makes Star Wars games
• February 2020 - EA cancels new open-world Star Wars Battlefront game from EA Vancouver
• February 2020 - New Star Wars High Republic era may pave way for future games
• June 2020 - EA is far from finished with Star Wars, promises more games are coming
• August 2020 - Star Wars boss: 'We need time to step back and absorb'
• January 2021 - EA has a 'number of new Star Wars games' in development
• February 2021 - EA's Star Wars games have made $3 billion, multiple new games in dev
• June 2021 - Respawn might be working on multiple Star Wars projects at once
• July 2021 - EA to reveal new Star Wars games in 2022 (Jedi Fallen Order 2, others)
• August 2021 - EA confirms new Jedi Fallen Order games are in development