Not long after the news broke that EA was giving Mass Effect and BioWare the axe, it was revealed that LucasFilm was looking for a development partner for its next Star Wars: Battlefront game, ostensibly Battlefront 3. In that rumor, it was claimed that LucasFilm was considering either Sony’s Bungie or EA’s DICE for the project. Now, it appears as though EA move to shut down BioWare and cancel Mass Effect was part of a bet on Star Wars: Battlefront 3, according to a new report from Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier.
The report claims that, following EA’s acquisition by the PIF group, which has already resulted in multiple rounds of layoffs, the executives at the gaming giant evaluated potential upcoming game projects and decided that Star Wars was the safer bet, with both Mass Effect and Battlefront 3 expected to cost hundreds of millions of dollars to produce. Part of the motivation for picking Star Wars over Mass Effect also appears to have been EA’s historic preference for and experience with shooters, like Battlefield 6.
The report also cites poor commercial performance of BioWare’s Dragon Age: The Veilguard, which is described as “a last chance” for the studio. Mass Effect: Andromeda also had a messy launch and poor sales figures, and, along with the monumental Anthem disaster, added fuel to EA’s cost-cutting decisions.