Mega-publisher Electronic Arts is experiencing massive layoffs this week. According to the Beeb, there was a Star Wars game cancelled as EA cuts 670 jobs. That's a lot of jobs. Recent games have received a fair amount of praise as of late, but canceled Star Wars projects are everywhere lately. They write:

Kotaku and other sites are reporting a huge, open-world Star Wars game that was in production now isn't.  The mourning! After Ragtag and other games just don't make it out, like the legendary old Battlefront III, we can only be left wondering what could have been.  Like why there wasn't an NES game based on Droids in 1985.  The world is full of disappointments.

Kotaku posted a really swell article called The Collapse Of Visceral's Ambitious Star Wars Game.  The game was one in which you played a Han Solo-gone-wrong type in the pre-Star Wars time frame, and the demos looked gorgeous.  The feature goes in to detail about what the game was - and wasn't - and how deadlines and budgets are a far deadlier enemy than the Galactic Empire.  Check it out.

Now that LucasArts is out, StarWars.com confirms EA is in.  Electronic Arts is one of the biggest video game publishers of all time with quite the reputation.  EA has a massive warchest and marketing reach to match, but has pioneered a number of gamer-unfriendly innovations while cultivating some of the greatest franchises of recent memory.