EA shuts down Visceral, will reboot its Star Wars game due to “marketplace”

EA has now dramatically shifted the development of the above unnamed Star Wars game. This image is from E3 2016; Visceral's game had long been hidden from the public with a way-off release target of 2019. (credit: EA)

EA packed a double-whammy announcement into a single post on its blog on Tuesday. The company announced the dissolution of an internal game studio and a substantial reboot of that studio's upcoming, unnamed Star Wars game.

Visceral Games, which began life as EA Redwood Shores in 1998, is now "ramping down." Members of its staff are being moved to "as many other projects" as possible, according to EA executive Patrick Siderlund. The studio is best known for the Dead Space trilogy, along with a number of '90s and '00s games in the Lord of the Rings and 007 franchises.

Visceral had most recently snagged headlines because the studio had been put in charge of one of EA's upcoming, unnamed Star Wars games. The project was being led by all-star game industry vet Amy Hennig (best known for the Uncharted series). That game appears to have been all but blown up, as per Siderlund's lengthy-yet-vague statement. "It was shaping up to be a story-based, linear game," he starts, only to describe "feedback about what and how [fans] want to play" and "fundamental shifts in the marketplace."

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