Last October, we saw a listing for Star Wars: First Assault, an unannounced Xbox Live Arcade game developed by LucasArts.
Today, Kotaku can reveal that Star Wars: First Assault is a downloadable multiplayer shooter that was originally slated for release this spring. The game supports up to 16 players—one eight-person team of rebels and one eight-person team of Stormtroopers—as they face off on Star Wars worlds like Bespin and Tatooine.
And according to one person familiar with the project, First Assault is ‘step zero’ to the heavily-rumored, highly-anticipated Star Wars: Battlefront III. If First Assault sells well—assuming it is released at all—the third Battlefront could be next.
The status of First Assault—like the status of Star Wars 1313 and other projects that LucasArts is currently working on—remains unclear today. The new direction of LucasFilm is also unclear. Just today, the company announced that they would no longer be releasing new episodes of the Clone Wars television show on Cartoon Network.
Nice to see Battlefront could possibly still be alive… But at what cost? (Been noticing a trend for companies effing up games with large fanbases when the game in question is canceled and then reactivated multiple times by different studios)