Star Wars: Battlefront

About

Star Wars: Battlefront is a game series originally developed by Pandemic Studios^[1] and published LucasArts^[2], and later by DICE^[3], and EA Games. The series is notable for being the best selling game series in the Star Wars franchise.

History

The original game was released on September 21, 2004 and was met with favorable reviews from critics as well as critical reception from Star Wars fans. The game went on to be the best selling Star Wars game for its time. A sequel titled Star Wars: Battlefront 2^[4] was released on October 31, 2005 and was met with similar praise as it’s predecessor. After many years of being in development hell, and third game was announced on June 10, 2013 and is set to be released on November 17, 2015.

Online Relevance

The Battlefront series has an immense following online, more often than not overlapping with the larger Star Wars fanbase. On Tumblr there are numerous tagged posts referring to the series^[5]. On Reddit there are several subreddits dedicated to the game series^[6]^[7]^[8].

Battlefront 3

Star Wars: Battlefront 3 was the original title of the third game in the in the series which was delayed for years and was sent of to various developers during it’s pre-production stages. Finally the game’s assets would be downgraded and released for the PlayStation Portable^[9] as Star Wars Battlefront: Elite Squadron^[10]. The delay of the game would be compared various times to other popular vaporware^[11] product Half-Life 3. The game spawned a number of various fan-sites^[12] dedicated to chronicling and new developments about the game, as well as a fan-dedicated subreddit^[13].

Battlefront (DICE)

Following the extended delay of Battlefront 3, as well as the closing of LucasArts, many seemed to fear that the game would forever be lost. However, EA Games subsidiary, DICE, would pick up the rights to the game and announce it under the title, Star War Battlefront (not to be confused with the original Battlefront title).