EA closed BioWare and cancelled the next Mass Effect because it decided to make Star Wars Battlefront III instead, according to a Bloomberg report by Jason Schreier published today. The twist is the state of the two Star Wars games in the picture: the one EA chose “hasn’t even started yet,” while Respawn’s third Star Wars Jedi game “is far in development” and “should be officially announced soon.”
Those three quotes come from Schreier’s own replies on Bluesky this afternoon, answering readers who asked how the newsletter’s reporting squares with Respawn’s trilogy. His framing of the piece itself was shorter: “The real reason? Star Wars.”
EA weighed Battlefront III against Mass Effect, both costing hundreds of millions
Per the Bloomberg newsletter, the main factor behind the October 21 shutdown was a new opportunity with Disney’s Lucasfilm to develop a third Battlefront game, which EA’s executives saw as the safer bet. The company had two science fiction action games on the table, each projected to cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and it picked Star Wars. Financial pressure and the disappointing results of BioWare’s recent games are reported as the other factors.
That pressure is the part we called in August. EA’s $55 billion sale to Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, Silver Lake and Affinity Partners closed on August 4 with around $20 billion of acquisition debt on top of the company, and EA then told its debt investors it would find about $700 million a year in cost cuts. BioWare went 78 days later, taking roughly 50 Edmonton staff and the Mass Effect game teased in 2020 with it. EA’s own statement at the time cited months of planning and review and named no other project.
Mass Effect was further along than EA let on. A leaked trailer revealed the game’s title, Mass Effect Universe, a day after the closure, and the author of Mass Effect: Annihilation was co-writing it. Fans have since put #SaveMassEffect on a Times Square screen.
DICE and Respawn will make Battlefront III, and it has not started
Asked on Bluesky whether the rumor that Bungie was making Battlefront III was wrong, Schreier answered: “DICE and Respawn will make Battlefront III.” DICE made the last two Battlefront games, the second of which launched in 2017 and became the centre of the loot box fight that pushed EA to strip paid progression out of it. Respawn, the studio behind Apex Legends and the Jedi series, would be new to Battlefront.
A reader then asked whether the project was “so far in development that it is not seen internally as a competitor” to Mass Effect. Schreier’s reply drew the line that matters for anyone wondering when they will play it:
“Jedi 3 is far in development; Battlefront 3 hasn’t even started yet”
Jason Schreier, Bloomberg, on Bluesky
In other words, EA closed a studio with a game in production to clear the budget for one that is still on paper. EA has not announced Battlefront III, and the report does not give a release window.
Star Wars Jedi 3 “should be officially announced soon”
The better news for Star Wars fans is the game EA already had. Respawn’s trilogy began with Jedi: Fallen Order in 2019 and continued with Jedi: Survivor in April 2023, and the third game has been known to exist without ever being shown. Asked what the report means for it, Schreier wrote: “That’s still coming, should be officially announced soon.”
Taken together with “far in development,” that puts the Jedi finale as the first of EA’s Star Wars projects to break cover, and the only one with a chance of a date before Battlefront III has a team. Neither EA nor Respawn has commented on the Jedi 3 timing.
Why the reporting matters to anyone still waiting on BioWare
EA’s public account of the closure was about “deliberate choices to align talent and investments.” Schreier’s reporting gives those choices a name, and it is a licensed shooter that does not exist yet over a 20-year-old original universe that was mid-production. If the Jedi 3 reveal lands in the next few weeks, it will be the first look at what EA is spending the BioWare money on.
