Star Wars: The Old Republic Going Third-Party as BioWare Focuses on Mass Effect and Dragon Age
Star Wars: The Old Republic Going Third-Party as BioWare Focuses on Mass Effect and Dragon Age
EA is nearing an agreement to move the ongoing development and operation of MMORPG Star Wars: The Old Republic from BioWare to third-party studio Broadsword Online Games, IGN has learned. The move is intended to allow BioWare to focus on Mass Effect and Dragon Age.
This might be a good thing all around. Bioware needs to focus on DA and ME, they need love and attention to not have another ME:A or Anthem.
In addition 3rd party studios are usually trying hard to prove themselves, depending on the relationship it could end up great. Fallout:NV of course is a great example of a studio handing IP over to a third party.
Then there's Grove Street Games, so who knows
I agree, BioWare does not need to be devoting its resources to SW:TOR at this point. It's been out for a good, long while and the fact is, MMORPGs are not big money-makers these days. There was a huge wave of them in the wake of WoW's success but none of them were able to achieve the kind of market success, player base or staying power of WoW. That ship has sailed, and it's only appropriate to let the BioWare devs get back to doing what they do best.
I don't have high hopes for the next Dragon Age game, but would love to be pleasantly surprised. They've changed directions so many times during the development of that game, so I'm expecting the end result to be a mess. Mass Effect gives me slightly more hope as a possible return to form for BioWare though, if they learn from Andromeda's missteps and focus on what made the original trilogy (particularly the first two games) great.