EA has confirmed that the upcoming Star Wars Mandalorian game being worked on by parkour shooter maestro Respawn Entertainment has been canceled. President of EA entertainment and technology Laura Miele delivered the news as the company announced it would be reducing its global workforce by ~5%.
“As we’ve looked at Respawn’s portfolio over the last few months, what’s clear is the games our players are most excited about are Jedi and Respawn’s rich library of owned brands,” Miele reasons. “Knowing this, we have decided to pivot away from early development on a Star Wars FPS Action game to focus our efforts on new projects based on our owned brands while providing support for existing games.”
This comes as a huge blow to Mando-mad Star Wars game enjoyers who had been eagerly awaiting the project’s next official update. It was recently reported that Respawn’s new FPS game would be a frenetic, Mandalorian-based bounty-hunting adventure and, from what was shared, it sounded like we’d finally get to offer up the beskar-clad beatdown promised by the canned Star Wars 1313 a decade ago.
Miele further announced that Seattle-based standalone studio Ridgeline, which had been working on a single-player Battlefield project, would also be closing its doors. Meanwhile, she envisions “strong growth opportunities” for the company’s largest gaming platform, mobile, despite the sunsetting of some of its titles.
All of these changes come as part of a broader restructure that was announced by EA CEO Andrew Wilson. In a letter sent to employees, Wilson says “we are continuing to optimize our global real estate footprint to best support our business. We are also sunsetting games and moving away from development of future licensed IP that we do not believe will be successful in our changing industry.”
EA expects “approximately 5%” of its workforce to be laid off as a result of the restructuring. This equates to ~670 of the ~13,400 employees highlighted in its 2023 Annual Report. Coming just days after PlayStation announced its own round of layoffs, an end to the industry-wide contraction doesn’t seem to be in sight.
For more of the latest news on new PS5 games and new Xbox games, check out the latest on GTA 6’s development. Meanwhile, read up on the new co-op FPS from Call of Duty Black Ops mastermind David Vonderhaar.