Pandemic Studios, who developed Battlefront, Battlefront II, Mercenaries and Clone Wars (2002) for LEC before being absorbed along with Bioware by EA has been shut down:
Electronic Arts has confirmed rumours regarding the closure of Mercenaries and Saboteur developer Pandemic Studios.This makes for a sucky situation for all those developers, and a fuzzy situation as far as who is developing the elusive Battlefront III. In 2006, the game's development was associated with UK studio Free Radical Design before it too closed its doors.
The majority of the Los Angeles-based studio’s 200 staff have been let go, including founders Josh Resnick, Andrew Goldman and Greg Borrud, who served as president, CEO and vice president of product development respectively, the publisher told Joystiq.
Following that, the game was said to be transferred to the hands of Rebellion, developer of the two handheld entries in the series, Renegade Squadron and, earlier this month, Elite Squadron. It was later suggested though that the company was only working on a PS2 port of the game, and that the franchise's original developer Pandemic was back at the wheel. That Pandemic would have been developing for LEC despite being owned by EA isn't out of the question given that LEC is partnering with Bioware for The Old Republic.
Of course, that's all moot now. I wonder who's next on the list?
This sort of soothes the latent agitation, albiet in a really sadistic way. Heh. Hehheh.
But hey, we'll always have this:
http://kotaku.com/5132905/heres-star-wars-battlefront-iiis-sith-kenobi
Unfortunately, this is the inevitable downside of being publisher-owned. It may look good at the start, give you a bit more security, but the moment things start going iffy with the publisher they'll cut your staff, and if things go iffy with even one of your games, they'll close you down.