Star Wars fans who have spent years hoping for another large-scale trip to Hoth, Endor, and Jakku may have a reason to pay attention. A new rumor claims that Star Wars Battlefront 3 is being worked on at EA's DICE and Respawn Entertainment. It comes from an industry figure rather than EA or Lucasfilm, and nothing has been officially announced, so it should be treated strictly as a rumor for now.
The claim was made on Monday (October 19th) by Joe Brammer, the CEO of British studio Bulkhead, which is behind the military shooter Wardogs.
The wording matters. Brammer says "from what I've heard" when it comes to Respawn, which makes that part secondhand. He does not work at EA and did not share any other details about the project, such as its setting, era, or platforms.
A Rumor Column Gets Things Started
Brammer was responding to another rumor that surfaced hours earlier. Electronic Gaming Monthly recently returned with issue #265 as part of its Compendium Kickstarter, with digital copies sent to backers earlier this month (October 9th), and the issue revived the magazine's classic Quartermann rumor column.
That column claims Lucasfilm has been trying to find a studio to make a follow-up to 2017's Star Wars Battlefront II, and it leaned hard into Star Wars imagery to say so:
"The suits at Lucasfilm have been aggressively deploying probe droids for a development partner to take on the task of creating a follow-up. So far, no one has fully stepped up, but yours truly is hearing two major game studios are circling the project like a couple of snowspeeders, led by the completely unsurprising EA DICE, who we can hope learned from their loot box lesson."
The column named Bungie as the other option, saying the project "could land at none other than Halo, Destiny, and Marathon developer Bungie" if DICE does not take it. Reporter Jeff Grubb, who read the passage on Giant Bomb's Game Mess Mornings, urged caution, saying "It doesn't sound like the game is in the works yet, but it does sound like there are conversations at the very least about who should take it on." It has also been pointed out that the column seems to have been written a while before publication, since some of its other rumors have already been confirmed.
A Saga Built For Massive Battles
Part of Battlefront's appeal for sci-fi fans is the scale. The series lets players fight as rank-and-file troopers in the iconic battles of the saga, and DICE made both modern entries, the 2015 reboot and 2017's Battlefront II, with the latter spanning all three trilogy eras. Battlefront II had a rough launch because of its loot box controversy, but it recovered and still has an active player base today.
Respawn would bring its own Star Wars credentials. The studio made Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, two of the most acclaimed story-driven Star Wars games in years, and it had been working on a Star Wars first-person shooter before EA cancelled that project during layoffs two years ago. With Apex Legends and Titanfall also in its track record, Respawn knows shooters well.
Two Rumors, No Confirmation
The two claims do not quite line up. The EGM column suggests Lucasfilm is still searching for a partner, while Brammer has heard that work is already happening at EA. Brammer even raised his own question about what this means for Battlefield, since DICE has been busy supporting Battlefield 6 since it launched last year. In follow-up posts, he said he would like to see Battlefield and Battlefront exist in the same cycle, and he also wondered how Bungie might change the formula if it got the job.
Neither EA, Lucasfilm, DICE, Respawn nor Bungie has commented, and there is no official announcement, platform, or release window. Until that changes, fans should keep their expectations in check.
Which era of the Star Wars saga would you most want a new Battlefront to focus on if it does happen?
Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.