LucasArts Begin Major Restructure News
Chris Leyton
16/08/2004
LucasArts announce major internal restructuring to focus on fewer titles…
Via its official website, LucasArts has recently confirmed plans for a major restructuring of their internal development studio; marking the first change within the company since Jim Ward took over as President in May.
Ward claimed āSince joining LucasArts in early May, Iāve taken a hard, critical look at our business. Iāve come to the conclusion that to make LucasArts thrive and to position ourselves for the long-term future, we need to make some fundamental changes.ā
As such Ward named Peter Hirschmann as Vice President of Product Development, who will oversee both internal and external development, having previously been involved witch such titles as Secret Weapons Over Normandy and the forthcoming Star Wars Battlefront and Mercenaries.
Details of the restructuring have recently come to light, with in-house development scaled way back to allow the company to āconcentrate on fewer titlesā; and whilst the forthcoming Star Wars Battlefront and Star Wars: Republic Commando will remain at LucasArts, the US publisher confirmed that Star Wars: Episode III will be developed at The Collective ā“ having previously developed ndiana Jones and the Emperorās Tomb for LucasArts.
Further rumours close to the situation have suggested that a provisional team set up to begin work on Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 3 have been let go during the layoffs; although this hasnāt been officially confirmed as of yet.