Mike Isaac

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Disney’s Star Wars Games Solution: Electronic Arts

The force is strong with EA. Or it will be soon enough.

Electronic Arts and The Walt Disney Corporation announced on Monday a new, multi-year licensing agreement, allowing EA to develop and globally publish games based on Star Wars, every nerd’s favorite franchise (Trekkies aside, that is).

“The magic of Star Wars is interwoven into the worlds, characters, planets and amazing battles. It is a universe that lends itself perfectly to gaming,” said EA Labels President Frank Gibeau in a blog post. “Our agreement unlocks a whole new future of Star Wars games that will span consoles, PCs, tablets, mobile and more.”

As you may remember, Disney acquired Lucasfilm last autumn for a whopping $4 billion, bringing into the fold all of the company’s properties — including LucasArts, the now-defunct gaming studio which Disney shut down a few months after acquiring Lucasfilm.

LucasArts was in the midst of developing a number of Star Wars titles when it was shuttered, including Star Wars 1313 — the Boba Fett-focused game currently in limbo — and Star Wars: First Assault. Disney said at the time it would instead be licensing the Star Wars properties out to other studios.

DICE and Visceral, two EA-operated studios, will begin to create new Star Wars games “spanning all interactive platforms,” while BioWare — the studio behind two of EA’s most popular Star Wars games — will also continue to develop games from the popular franchise.

Disney, the company said, will continue to hold certain rights for developing mobile, social and tablet-based Star Wars games.

“This agreement demonstrates our commitment to creating quality game experiences that drive the popularity of the Star Wars franchise for years to come,” said John Pleasants, co-President of Disney Interactive, in a statement.

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I think the NSA has a job to do and we need the NSA. But as (physicist) Robert Oppenheimer said, “When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and argue about what to do about it only after you’ve had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.”

— Phil Zimmerman, PGP inventor and Silent Circle co-founder, in an interview with Om Malik