While talking about our exclusive partnership for XboxGamers: Level 4 with Lucas Arts, we discovered that Star Wars Galaxies may not come to Xbox at all!



This is what Ronda Scott from Lucas Arts had to say about the title:



“There might be some confusion with regard to Star Wars
Galaxies. It is coming out for the PC in April, with
potential plans at some point for console versions.
The team would not be able to answer any Xbox related
questions at this time.”



Will we or won’t we get Star Wars Galaxies? Who knows but we just had to clear the air so some of you guys don’t get your hopes up for a xbox title that doesn’t even exist!



well, that sucks

Link (http://www.xboxgamers.com/newspro/fullnews.cgi?newsid1044646822,42011,)

that would suck:( sony probable paid them off or something

http://xbox.ign.com/articles/360/360045p1.html

Originally posted by x marks the spo
that would suck:( sony probable paid them off or something

You do know who's making Star Wars Galaxies don't you?

The company is called SONY Online Entertainment.

yah but lucas arts didnt they want it come to xbox also??

Anytime a dev has a product coming out, they don't want to divert attention by talking about another product. Just look at Splinter Cell, they basically denied its existance until the day they officially announced it.

Bah just get the PC version, the game is still a few months alway and there is already a Space expansion pack in development that will allow for space travel and that kind of stuff :)

-Z

ummmm my videocard sucks thats why i want the xbox version!!!

Let me be totally serious with you for a minute.

If Galaxies doesn't come out for Xbox LIVE, I probably won't GET Xbox LIVE. Halo 2 or not. I can play Halo syslinked with my two Xboxes, same with MechAssault and most of the other LIVE games I want to own. But Galaxies REQUIRES LIVE.

No Galaxies, no LIVE. For me.

But I think it's just a ploy. LucasArts knows who's got the "functional" online, and it's NOT SONY.

Didn't microsoft make a BIG DEAL about this being on XBOX at the last E3? I am sure they did.

I was saying this months ago. I knew this game wouldnt be on XBOX live. .....and deep down so did you.

they made a big deal about this being on xbox at e3 last year if its not what a freaking LIE!!!!!!!!!!:mad:

They might be waiting to see how well people scoop up Everquest Online Adventures for PS2 before they try another Console MMORPG.

Uhhhhhh...... Yes Splinter Cell..... No PS2 og Gamecube marks and everything was cool...... Im still mad at Ubi for this..... They better not screw up Raven Shield......

The Gamecube version of Rayman 3 on Gamecube will also have allot of "only" features like ekstra levels and link up with gameboy advance!!! Stupid Ubi Soft:(

Anyways..


Starwars: Galaxies: An empire divided will not come out for Xbox! yes SWG will come but it will be called someone else and SOE will not port it to Xbox as long as they don't are insane!

What they want now is just to get the half world to buy this game!

After that all the things about the Xboxversion will come up..... I can already imagen the pop ups and posters: "Why play a MMORPG with an keyboard when you can talk for real on Xbox Live! Starwars Galaxies: Xbox Divided... Out soon".....:D

Hmmmm..... I don't know why but there will be a long tim ebefore SWG will come out for Xbox(if it will come)! I say 2004! Xbox is just not a system u just put up a new patch three times at day like on PC..... They probebly are gonna bugtest it for a half a year!

If MS is smart they give us the servers for free until 2005 were they will close down and XBL sales WOULD BOOST, tottaly! I hope allot of people won't buy PSO(Sorry Sega)

i said it a while ago you won't see this on xbox.. its got PS2 and Sony Entertainment plastered all over everything!!!

Originally posted by Mystikclaw
They might be waiting to see how well people scoop up Everquest Online Adventures for PS2 before they try another Console MMORPG. http://www.funnypaperz.com/101/dlpg35.gif

Scoop up

Better check Dreamweaver's pulse. This is about the lamest crap I have even heard of. I was really looking forward to this game. In fact, if it wasn't for this game I wouldn't be considering Xbox Live. Halo 2 just isn't going to be enough. I see the keel of the Xbox.

They better take the Xbox Lofo of the official site and product page then:

http://www.lucasarts.com/products/galaxies/

http://www.lucasarts.com/products/galaxies/splash.htm
Availability: PC - April 15, 2003
PlayStation 2 / Xbox Live - To Be Announced
Genre: Role Playing - Massively Multiplayer Online
Platform: PC Windows, PlayStation 2, Xbox Live


Both say its coming for Xbox, and there was an official press release to it. So I think its just a mess up, or she is saying she doesnt know when the release date is.

This is the official press-release:
http://www.lucasarts.com/products/galaxies/press4.htm

SAN RAFAEL, Calif. -- May 20, 2002 -- LucasArts Entertainment Company LLC today announced its intent to develop versions of the company's highly anticipated first game of its Star Wars Galaxies™ online series for Xbox Live and PlayStation 2. Specific release dates for the Star Wars Galaxies-branded massively multiplayer games for the two next generation console platforms will be announced at a later time. This December LucasArts will release a Windows PC version of the game, developed by Sony Online Entertainment, titled Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided™.

The Star Wars Galaxies online game series is designed to immerse literally thousands of players into the rich Star Wars universe. The series will feature dynamic role-playing adventures across multiple planets during the classic Star Wars timeframe. Game play will offer a unique combination of combat, exploration, social interaction, specialized missions, and daring quests.

"The ultimate goal with these versions of Star Wars Galaxies is to solidify LucasArts' position at the forefront of the emerging online console game genre, and we're confident this strategy will do just that," says Randy Breen, vice president of development for LucasArts. "By offering the Star Wars Galaxies series on video game consoles such as Xbox and PlayStation 2, LucasArts will be able to bring this eagerly awaited game to an entirely new audience of players who previously may not have had an opportunity to experience it."

"We're thrilled that Star Wars Galaxies -- the most anticipated massively multiplayer game ever -- is coming to Xbox Live," says J Allard, general manager of the Xbox platform. "We designed Xbox from day one to support great online games like Star Wars Galaxies. This announcement validates our vision that the best games of the future will take advantage of the Xbox system's built-in broadband support."

"We're delighted to partner with LucasArts in bringing the Star Wars universe to the PlayStation 2, the world's best-selling next-generation game system," says Andrew House, senior vice president, Sony Computer Entertainment America. "Our goal with bringing PlayStation 2 online is to be able to showcase dynamic content that fosters multi-player opportunities and community building. The mass appeal of Star Wars combined with the tens of millions of PlayStation users represents a huge step forward in computer entertainment and the future of online gaming."

I'll be honest, as bad as I want a mmorpg to play on my xbox, im still not sure if the communicator would be enough communication. it seems like voice or no voice a keyboard will still be needed or you would be sacrificing parts of the game. and having a keyboard while playing a console game seems like a hassle (no desk to put it on).

I know a lot of people will disagree with me but when i think about the mmorpg's ive played, and ive played probably all of them from everquest on, there is a lot of keyboard typing that is done. ei: group chat, guild chat, say, shout, auctions, tells or private messages, ooc, talking to NPC's etc and so on. and a lot of it you would likt to beable to have going on at the same time. like for instance I can remember being in a group, talking to my guild, talking in tells to a friend, and trying to buy an items all at the same time. I just cant see, comparing how voice is handled in the current xboxlive games, how it would be possible to have that going on. having voice set up like motogp(talking to people as they are close to you) or UC (with the channels) just wont be enough. and if its dumbed down too much thats when you start to loose some of what an mmorpg is all about.

But about starwars galaxies, if it comes to xbox I will definitly play it, but if it doesnt, it doesnt bother me personally, I may never play it. but I know how much good that game can do for xbox live so I want to see it on xbox live. not being on live wouldnt matter as much if no consoles get it but if the ps2 gets it and we dont then that would hurt.

Originally posted by RiverRaid
Better check Dreamweaver's pulse.

:D

Without a hard drive and a videocard that can handle it, SWG will not be an option on PS2

Originally posted by Mystikclaw
Without a hard drive and a videocard that can handle it, SWG will not be an option on PS2

Sure it will. It will just be hacked up as bad as Everquest is.

Originally posted by SpaceGhost2K
Let me be totally serious with you for a minute.

If Galaxies doesn't come out for Xbox LIVE, I probably won't GET Xbox LIVE. Halo 2 or not. I can play Halo syslinked with my two Xboxes, same with MechAssault and most of the other LIVE games I want to own. But Galaxies REQUIRES LIVE.

No Galaxies, no LIVE. For me.

But I think it's just a ploy. LucasArts knows who's got the "functional" online, and it's NOT SONY.

You mean to tell me SpaceGhost the almighty MS rep doesn't already have live!?!?:eek:

This is just PR talk so the hype for the PC release isnt compromised by the Xbox version. Games like these arnt just put together in a couple of months. There not going to release the Pc version and then sit back and decide if they are going to do a Xbox version. That decision would have to have been made long ago. So them acting like they still havent made the decision is kinda lame.

Therefore, unless something happens like Sony stepping in and doing something stupid, Galaxies will arrive on the Xbox.

Well, this is exactly what I've said countless times in many other threads before.

SW Galaxies as it is on PC is most likely NOT the game that will be on consoles. There was plenty of evidence of this (there being a PS2 version for one, which for obvious reasons was NOT going to be a port of the PC version) all along.


They said there would be different console 'versions' of SWG, not ports of the PC version. In fact, they even stated the the console SW Galaxies would not be called "Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided" but would carry another name under the "Star Wars Galaxies" title, meaning they are not going to be the same game.
Which lead me to believe it would be a deal similar to EQ Adventures on PS2.

dont believe everything you say on websites that post pieces of a quote that gets taken the wrong way.

well, I'm not saying I believe its canned for xbox (or even that thats a possibility, as there is NO reason to believe its canned, this site is just putting words in other people's mouths and jumping to conclusions to make a more dramatic story/headline).

Quite the opposite, a Star Wars Galaxies game is going to come out on the consoles.
I just think its not going to be the PC version on consoles. (as in a direct port)

Microsoft has a deal with Lucas Arts to get Star Wars Galaxies on the XBox. Just the date for the release is the only concern. Sony is making it and they have to put it on the XBox unless Lucas Arts gives back some huge lump sum of money back to Microsoft and backs out from what I am told.

Seems to me that they are just concentrating on the PC version for now and console ones later.

they again removed some nice features from the final version , this and the longtime planned addon (FIGHT IN SPACE) , ok this is the most ambitious MMORPG but its enought ! i hope the xbox version will be postponed and include all this removed features cause they have to put this game out on time on PC


Shug Ninx stopped by the SWG Official Discussion Forum to give us the bad news for today:
As many of you who have been part of our community since the outset probably realize by now, our feature set list is missing a few things. As with any game development process, we go through constant revisions on the design in order to both tighten the game by focusing on what turns out to be the most fun, and put together a quality game that actually sees the light of day. However, as BoShek noted in a previous post, Star Wars Galaxies is a living, growing game. While we have changed some aspects of the design and trimmed here or there, in general we were reluctant to permanently kill a design feature, especially if it had already been discussed here on the boards. But, we have decided to postpone a few features until after launch. Here, I want to try to explain why these decisions were made.

In general, our philosophy has always been that we wanted a polished, stable product at launch. Rather than attempt to do everything at once and have it all turn out mediocre, we wanted to focus on fewer features and do them all really well (Rather than 20 species, we only have 8, but each species is incredibly customizable - far more so than you'd get if we had pushed for 20).

As we moved forward and continually revised our schedule, it became apparent that the postponement of several significant systems would allow us to release the game sometime in mid-April. The most important of these systems were:

-Player Cities
-Player-Owned Vehicles
-Player-Generated Missions
-Dark Jedi (okay, this is really a "feature", but still…)

At that time, we also began work on our Live Team schedule, which provides a plan for implementing the postponed systems within the first seven or eight months after launch.

Postponement Criteria

When evaluating the systems and features, we used the following criteria to determine if a cut or postponement made sense (and we went through basically *every* system and feature):

-We’d wanted to cut or postpone entire systems. Although we continued to trim assets and small features from the game, this “nickel and dime” approach wasn't actually increasing our efficiency. In most cases, just implementing a system’s core functionality is 80% of the work, so trimming is only valuable to a point. It also does nothing to prevent the team from being spread too thin.

-We wanted to postpone rather than cut a system. In general, we only wanted to push out systems that can still be integrated post-launch.

-Systems were cut or postponed based largely on the programming and scripting time required. At the time we made these decisions, we were ahead of schedule on world development and on schedule with art assets. In contrast, programming and scripting resources were overburdened. Particularly problematic were the UI programming tasks for each game system.

-Cutting or postponing a system needed to free up team members that could aid us on more critical systems, or provide us with team member that could be used to polish the overall game (which includes creating "free time" for designers to playtest).

-If cutting or postponing a system resulted in additional tasks (to compensate for design dependencies), those tasks needed to fall to people already ahead of schedule (such as the world artists). Obviously, the number of additions needed to be reasonable.

Player Cities

What Are Player Cities?

The original design allows players to form their own cities. They can elect a mayor, build municipal structures (such as starports), establish a handful of laws, create militias, and alter the city layout as the city grows.

Rationale for Postponement

This system is extremely labor intensive for programmers and scripters. It requires attention from key people that would be better utilized on fine-tuning combat and other, more immediate systems. Although it requires a great deal of work, it’s one of the easiest systems to add post-launch, in part because the patch required would be extremely small (all of the art assets are already available because we’re building “fiction” cities that are not player-run). From a design standpoint, most players won’t be immediately interested in or capable of forming cities (or be able to afford building houses); it’s really one of our mechanisms for retention after the first few months of gameplay. And while cities are helpful in creating player communities, we have other mechanisms for this already in place (player associations, various chat channels, player venues, etc.). Postponing player cities automatically reduces the priority on some skills and professions, also "allowing" us to postpone Politician. Postponing the related skills gained us several man-days of scripting time.

Finally, it’s extremely important to note that postponing player cities does not postpone player housing. Players will still be able to own and place structures. What we’re really postponing is an official mechanism for a group of player houses to identify themselves as a city and start receiving benefits as a result. There are many on the team who believe that, given the ability to place houses, players will still form their own “unofficial” cities without our help.

Playing Devil’s Advocate…

As noted, player cities are one of our retention mechanisms. They’re also important to helping players create their own sense of community online. Player cities are innovative and would be a “new” system for MMO players. Player cities also contribute to the growth of the player-driven economy.

Postponing player cities has also created no small amount of additional work for our world builders. Cities are necessary for players because they contain a number of vital resources, such as banks and cloning facilities. On Tatooine, we had already planned for several cities, but other worlds were designed specifically as real estate for player-run cities. As a result, we've needed to build additional cities, which is time-consuming.

Final Analysis

Postponing this system provided us with a huge savings in programming time, but created several man-days of world building tasks. Fortunately, at the time world builders were ahead of schedule and fiction city building was running smoothly, so we saw the new world building tasks as very low risk. To us, player cities seem like an important part of the overall design, but definitely something we could add after launch.

Player Vehicles

What Is the Player Vehicle System?

The system would allow players to own, operate, repair, and craft single-passenger vehicles, like landspeeders and speeder bikes. It does NOT include game-controlled vehicles, like public transports, which are still necessary for launch.

Rationale for Postponement

Of all the systems we considered postponing, this is the single largest time sink. The basic control scheme for vehicle movement is already established (through our the Space Expansion prototype), but the system still needs a great deal of work in order to function within the game. We have to script repair and crafting skills (since all items decay, even vehicles need to be maintained), create garages (because we don’t want vehicles driving through cities), attach the player to the vehicle, script vehicle use rules per planet, debug the control scheme, and add special cases to the camera. Many of these tasks fall to our scripters, with ample programming support required as well.

We were comfortable postponing this system because of its strong relationship to the Space Expansion; the Vehicles System would actually be part of the early Space Expansion work. In fact, one could argue that we don’t want to rush into any technology or design decisions in order to realize ground vehicles until we’ve had a chance to better evaluate the goals and needs of the space expansion.

As with Player Cities, postponing Player Vehicles allows us to reprioritize some skills, freeing scripters. Finally, from a design standpoint, vehicles will be expensive, so players wouldn’t be able to afford them immediately.

Playing Devil’s Advocate…

Tooling around in a landspeeder is part of the Star Wars fantasy. In addition, our worlds are really large, and traveling them on foot could be tiresome and dangerous. The vehicle system also adds another branch to our crafting professions, giving that system greater depth.

Postponing player vehicles did create some small amount of work for us as well. Because our worlds are so large, players will need fast and efficient means for travel. We’ve always planned to include public transports that automatically take players between various cities on a planet; however, without player-owned vehicles, we needed to add a few more hubs (large cities) for this type of travel. Fortunately, this addition synchs nicely to the need for more fictional cities as mentioned above.

Finally, it’s important to note that we can’t have “mounts” (creatures that players can ride) without some of the core functionality introduced by the vehicle system. This means that mounts are also postponed.

Final Analysis

Postponing vehicles is the most painful decision for virtually everyone on the team. It is not one that we made lightly, nor have we underestimated the impact that this will have on the overall Star Wars experience. Even the genuine commitment to include the vehicle system after launch does not negate the loss of a key Star Wars element at launch. We also understand that there will be an expectation for player-owned and operated vehicles, which will put tremendous pressure on the Live Team to deliver.

With all that said, the relief to programmer and scripter bandwidth is too great to ignore. And, in the long run, we're confident that the vehicle system will benefit from being postponed because it will be able to leverage the work being done on the space expansion.

It's also important to note that vehicles are one of our top priorities. We want to get ground-based vehicles into the game as soon as possible (so, don't assume just because they share some design and technology concerns that vehicles won't be in until close to the Space Expansion release - we really hope that isn't the case).

Player-Generated Missions

What Are Player-Generated Missions?

The ability to for players to create and post missions through the mission system.

Rationale for Postponement

This is one area where, perhaps, our design was more fun on paper than it would have been in the game. When we really distilled player-generated missions, we realized that these are basically delivery missions. The fun part is that they are delivery missions for other players, but we couldn't think of any other ways that players would use the system. On top of that, adding this functionality would have been a major time sink for both programmers and designers. UI would also need to be implemented. In fact, the system would burden just about every area of development that needed relief…

Playing Devil’s Advocate…

The system fosters greater player interaction and may generate revenue for artisans and other crafters. It also allowed yet another way to earn some credits and have fun without necessarily getting involved in combat. Finally, it's one more way that we can add content without actually building content in-house: conceivably, including player-generated missions could result in many times the number of available missions.

Final Analysis

While we've constantly second-guessed our other postponements, I think everyone is fairly comfortable with removing player-generated missions from launch. I'm sure this postponement will upset some in the community, and for that we're truly sorry, but overall, the net effect has been positive. The number of things that would have dropped out of the design in order to get player-generated missions in would have made you all a lot less happy.

Also, it's key to note that this doesn't negatively impact Bounty Hunter or Smuggler professions, from a player's perspective. We've compensated by creating a whole system of game-generated bounty hunting opportunities, and the current Smuggler design doesn't rely on player-generated missions at all.

Dark Jedi

What Are Dark Jedi?

The evil counterparts to regular Jedi. As designed, the Jedi system should allow players to become both Jedi and Dark Jedi. Dark Jedi would have access to different Force powers.

Rational for Postponement

Because Jedi aren't going to be immediately attainable (i.e., you'll have to work at it), there's not as much urgency with this system (although we do need to balance it). Before you can become a Dark Jedi, you need to first work your way up to a certain place in the "regular Jedi" ranks, so it should be some time before the first players are even eligible for this dubious honor (and, I'm not going to try to estimate how long that will take; whatever I said, some player would just come along and prove me wrong ). As with everything else, Dark Jedi require some additional work, especially for scripters. We'd rather have our designers working on balancing the existing professions and making those as fun as possible than dedicated too much time to a path that only a small percentage of players will ever experience. As with the previously postponed Hutt Faction, I'd argue that when we do include Dark Jedi, we want to do it right.

Playing Devil's Advocate

Dark Jedi are really cool. There are many community members who want to be Dark Jedi and will be extremely upset by this news. Dark Jedi are also strong counterparts to the normal Jedi and would help us balance and control the population (and who doesn't want to see two Jedi fighting?).

Final Analysis

I don't think there's any concern that Dark Jedi won't eventually make it into the game. They won't be there at launch, but truthfully, we'll likely still be testing the Jedi system at launch.

What we Saved…

Just so we're clear, our efforts over the past many months haven't been all about postponing stuff. In fact, we have managed to "save" various systems and features, and even found new things that we wanted to add that were fairly easy to implement. As we discover what's fun about the game, we devise new ways to make the game even more fun, which results in new additions. Some highlight:

-Pets/Droids: This was actually on the "postponement block" for quite some time, but the team felt so strongly about having pets in the game that we managed to get it working well ahead of schedule. It's proved very useful because we can use the same system for droids and even NPCs that you can command on battlefields.

-Weather Affecting Combat: This is back in, and working well on the QA server.

-We increased the number of professions, and added features (new special moves, for example) to each profession that are outside the original design, all in the interest of making the professions more fun.

-Much more content than we originally intended. We're creating more POIs, more static quests, more random missions, even more cities than we originally planned.

-Badges: These rewards for players were also an easy thing to postpone, but we decided to keep them, despite the UI work necessary. We just wanted another cool reward in the game.

Our Post-Launch Plan

Obviously, determining whether we can postpone systems and still create a viable experience in the long-term was dependent on a post-launch schedule. Our first priority after the game goes live is fixing any bugs that ruin the experience for players. Bug-fixing and, to some degree, balancing must be our focus for at least a few weeks. However, we are also committed to including the postponed features and systems.

Of the postponed systems, player-owned and operated vehicles are first on our list to complete. This will take some time, and rigorous testing on the Test Server, but we'll be devoting a large portion of our energies to the system.

Player cities come next in terms of priority (although, depending upon the complexity of both systems, player cities could actually appear first - different people will be working on them, so the work may be progressing simultaneously). As the community grows, the need for player cities will increase as well.

Dark Jedi will likely be next on our slate. How quickly players are able to attain Jedi status may increase or decrease the urgency of this feature, but it's something we definitely want, especially as the number of potential Jedi grows.

Player-generated missions are last on the list (among these items, at least - we have dozens of other things we want to get into the game throughout the months after launch).

Final Comments…

Again, we apologize if your "pet feature" or system was postponement. The only thing I can say to ease the pain is that many of us on the development side also had to endure the loss of our pet features as well. I can also assure you that we're going to do everything we can to continue to grow the game over time, and that includes adding the new features described above.

Let us know if you have any questions.

Haden Blackman
LucasArts Producer

http://swg.stratics.com

The current (latest) press release may be a frantic backtrack if they now are not bringing it to LIVE!!!

Conspiracy theorists abound!