2016 was a bumper year for Star Wars fans. Not only did they get Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, DICE released several updates for Star Wars Battlefront, including a movie tie in. As an added bonus for PlayStation 4 owners this also included Rogue One: X-Wing VR Mission for PlayStation VR. Now it seems another virtual reality (VR) title could be in the pipeline as work begins on the next Star Wars video game.
While DICE developed Star Wars Battlefront, for the VR experience the studio brought Criterion Games on board. Better known for its racing franchises such as Burnout and Need for Speed, Criterion has been confirmed to still be working on Star Wars. A posting on EA’s Star Wars Battlefront website states: “While no future Skirmish content is planned, DICE isn’t done with Star Wars – the team has shifted its focus to creating the next great Star Wars game, a collaborative effort between three world-class studios: DICE, Criterion, and Motive. We look forward to sharing more with you later this year and thank you for being such a tremendous support of our work in a galaxy far, far away.”
In a further post – this time by Jade Raymond, Group General Manager, Motive Studios | Visceral Games – at present Motive Studios is working with DICE on the next instalment of Star Wars Battlefront, Visceral Games will be debuting a new action adventure game in 2018, while Respawn Entertainment are making their own 3rd person action adventure. A teasing line at the end says: “And we’re early in pre-production on some other projects we think you’re going to be excited about as well.”
Star Wars video games are always going to be popular – even if previous titles have been somewhat lackluster at points – and certainly another VR project would go down well with VR users, just look at the positive ratings Trials on Tatooine gets for HTC Vive on Steam.
If and when Criterion or DICE do confirm another Star Wars VR experience, VRFocus will let you know.