Then take a looksy at recent news (google it) of Slant Six, a company once rumored to have been working on Battlefront III, including secretive images of their Battlefront III renders (and other files) hidden on the Capcom published "Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City" disc.
Makes no sense, right?
But yeah, it apparently confirmed at one point Slant Six was working on the project. But apparently they weren't up to par with Lucasarts incredibly high demands. Lucasarts is in pretty bad shape, and a 'bad' Battlefront III could permanently cripple the company. Seems it's cheaper for them to shop around small and cheaper developers and have them create small builds for BF3 in hopes that one of them produces something promising. If not, the cost of having them test run and tinker is considered far less of a loss if they went ahead and utilized that studio for the full game.
Yeah, stupid.
Especially because Slant Six probably could have done it. They don't have the biggest track record, with only a few titles under their belt. On the PS3, before they did ResEvil:ORC they created Socom: Confrontation, the online only (and quickly hated as a result) Socom game. In REORC they demonstrated their ability to produce another TPS game that aces all the fundamentals, save one very big problem area. AI. They were horrid at it, and if anything Battlefront would require bots, and bots need good AI, especially this generation.
Unfortunately with rumors of the next gen consoles hitting next year we'll probably never see Battlefront III till the next console age.
Sucks. :\ At one point Lucasarts was making bad decisions, fired a crapload of staff, but then bounced back, knocked battlefront out of the park and had several other star wars titles out there making bank. Then things fell apart. Cycle repeated. Hopefully that means the success of yesteryear is due for a return as well - and though Activision is on very bitter terms with Lucasarts (puts the brakes on the Jedi Knight series), we could see a more improved, multiplayer friendly Force Unleashed III. Yunno, something with MORE than a lousy 4 hour story mode, as well as an eventual Battlefront III, and while dreaming, another X-Wing series game, Rebel Assault/Rogue Squadron, and possibly an entirely new SW property (not including anything MMO/Bioware).
Anyway. I still want them to make an HD remaster of Battlefront 1. Port and HD render the PC version, with its HUD views and larger player count battles. PS3/Qbox can handle that load. They'd also have to remove gamespy server handling and do it through PSN/QBL. (I can dream, right?)
*edit 3, the search for edit 2
Okay, so apparently Free Radical was contracted to do not just Battlefront 3, but also Battlefront 4. Battlefront 3 was nearing completion too, with something like 20% left to go when Lucasarts made several company/management changes resulting in 'suits' advising Free Radical that it was pulling the plug on the Battlefront project. (But somehow Force Unleashed was supposed to make more money???)
Edit: May 01, 12 12:45pm
The fact that there is new alpha footage to be shown raises my hopes.
