LucasArts to Cancel Internal Development?

Following reports of widespread layoffs at LucasArts it is rumoured (and, dare we say it, speculated) that the company plans to cease all internal development.

The rumour comes from Shacknews, which claims it was told as much by "a reliable source". The source apparently told the site that once Star Wars: The Force Unleashed has been completed another 100 or so employees will be laid off and internal development will come to a halt.

At that point, any incomplete internal development projects will be farmed out to external studios.

While the word of an unnamed "reliable source" obviously can't be taken as gospel, this one certainly sounds plausible. It was suggested that up to 100 employees were terminated by LucasArts last week, with at least some of them known to be staff involved in production. Those do not seem like the actions of a company dedicated to persevering with internal development.

Still, LucasArts' public relations director Margarte Grohne has been quoted as saying last week, “We are definitely committed to the internal studio. We have a good slate of games and we have some good stuff going on in production."

(For those of a sporting bent, that can also be read as a 'vote of confidence by the board'.)

Back when LucasArts' former CEO, Jim Ward, parted ways with the company, one anonymous forum poster with apparent knowledge of the inner workings of the publisher said, “There are some that believe that more money can be made by licensing the SW and Indiana Jones IP to third party developers than through in-house development. Whether Mr. Roffman's (LucasArts' interim CEO) taking over the reins of LucasArts represents such a shift will be only be revealed in time.”

LucasArts is certainly no stranger to outsourcing development, with the likes of LEGO Indiana Jones, LEGO Star Wars and Knights of the Old Republic having been developed by the likes of Travellers' Tales and BioWare.

^{Source: Shacknews}