Since 2013 when EA signed a 10-year deal with Disney for the license to publish Star Wars games, the experience for fans has been a bit of a rollercoaster. While the first Battlefront released with success, Battlefront 2 was embroiled in controversy over microtransactions, and then came news of the cancellation of two more Star Wars games in development. Many fans have called for Disney to revoke EA's license and have hoped Disney would give the license to another publisher or to bring all the game development for the franchise in-house at Disney. But according to Disney CEO Bob Iger, the company has no intentions of self-publishing Star Wars games anytime soon.

Before Disney decided to shut down its own studios, the company had self-published games including Disney Infinity, Epic Mickey, and a number of games based on their film franchises to different levels of success; but, according to Iger, in-house development and self-publishing is not Disney's strength:

"Over the years we've tried our hand in self-publishing. We've bought companies, we've sold companies, we've bought developers, we've closed developers. And we've found over the years that we haven't been particularly good at the self-publishing side, but we've been great at the licensing side."

The relationship between Disney and EA seems to be in good standing despite what fans may believe, with Iger saying, "We have good relationships with some of those that we’re licensing to, notably EA." Based on these statements and confidence that Iger clearly has in Disney's current handling of the game licensing of its franchises, it is safe to assume that EA will continue to handle Star Wars games going into the future, at least through its 10-year deal that ends in 2023.

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Many fans are still feeling sore over the cancellation of the Uncharted-style Star Wars game, codenamed "Ragtag," which was in development by former Uncharted director Amy Hennig and Visceral Games followed by the more recent news that the rebooted open-world version of that game, codenamed "Orca," had also been canceled.

Still in development is Jedi: Fallen Order, being worked on by Titanfall and Apex Legends studio Respawn Entertainment, which is scheduled for release later this year. In addition, after the cancellation of "Orca," EA said its Vancouver studio is working on a smaller-scale Star Wars project that can be released sooner than "Orca" would have been.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter