According to Kotaku's unnamed sources at the studio, new president Paul Meegan has cancelled the in-production Force Unleashed III, will let a lot of TFU2's staff go when that comes out this October, and has put another unnamed project (possibly fish-related) on hold.
These sources say "morale and productivity are at all-time lows" since Meegan took over...
Just to make him Meegan seem completely insane and contradictory, after this in-house scrubbing and axeing session, this quote is the most worrying:
We've also been told that another sweeping change made by Meegan is that the majority of "external" development of Lucasarts properties is coming to an end, with BioWare's Old Republic MMO to be the last game not developed internally at Lucasarts. That would presumably mean, for example, no more LEGO Star Wars or LEGO Indiana Jones titles after the upcoming LEGO: Clone Wars, as those have all been handled by Traveller's Tales.
Let's hope that these rumours prove untrue. After the departure of Darrell Rodriguez, many executives and Haden Blackman however, I wouldn't be surprised if there was truth in here.
Source: Kotaku
Scummbuddy
The Tingler
...disagrees with the Top Men.
Who are these "Top Men"? :)
Top men...Dr.Jones...
The Tingler
...disagrees with the Top Men.
Who are these "Top Men"? :)
That makes no sense, unless the rumour is missing some vital information.
the majority of "external" development
The "majority" does not mean "all", so if this is true there's still a chance ToMI or more LEGO games are possible.
On LEGO though, how much more is there to mine from LucasArts? I'd say the LEGO games will move into more Disney territory (Toy Story, Pirates of the Carribean etc).
AlfredJ
Didn't those Lego-games make tons of money?
That's what I always thought.
Didn't those Lego-games make tons of money?
Ascovel
What are the benefits of stating that from now on you'll always be doing everything in-house? Especially when you don't really have any tried in-house development teams at hand? To me this rumor doesn't sound very convincing.
I agree that the two parts to this rumour seems very contradictory - axeing major (and certainly profitable) internal games and staff, and yet somehow focusing on internal development only? Unfortunately, the management at LucasArts have proven time and again that they really don't have a clue. A president comes in, has a few great new ideas which come at the expense of the old ideas, and then they're brushed away in 2-3 years when something about them disagrees with the Top Men.
But yeah, I'm terrified that we're not going to get any more much needed re-releases and that the team represented by the LucasArts Workshop blog is being relieved of the purpose they had under Rodriguez's direction. I don't know what this means for future Telltale collaborations though, since that situation was a little bit more special than a normal publisher-developer relationship. Still, it's been only a year since the MI5 that we were all convinced was never going to happen and that actually turned out good, so it's probably still early to be feeling to entitled to another installment.
Still, let's not get carried away just yet. Not just yet...