As a Consumerist reader and tipster puts it, the news that Electronic Arts has signed a deal to develop and publish games based off Star Wars, it’s as if “millions of Star Wars gamer nerds cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced…” That’s a reference to (spoiler alert) the destruction of an entire planet (Alderaan) in Episode IV, for those not in the know.

According to EA and Disney’s announcement, EA “will develop and publish new Star Wars titles for a core gaming audience, spanning all interactive platforms and the most popular game genres, while Disney will retain certain rights to develop new titles within the mobile, social, tablet and online game categories.”

Gamasutra says it’ll be an exclusive, multi-year agreement, with the EA studios behind Battlefield, Dead Space on the project, as well as BioWare (the company that worked on Star Wars: The Old Republic and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic) on task to create the new Star Wars games.

“The new experiences we create may borrow from films, but the games will be entirely original with all new stories and gameplay,” said EA Games label president Frank Gibeau.

TIming seems to be everything here, as just last month Disney announced it would be shutting down all internal work on its LucasArts game division.

EA inks exclusive deal to develop ‘core’ Star Wars video games  [Gamasutra]

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