After lots of speculation about the status of Star Wars 1313 and of LucasArts in general, it has been announced today that the company will be shifting from a development studio, into a new licensing studio, and has announced layoffs throughout the company. Below is the official statement from LucasArts:

[blockquote cite=]“After evaluating our position in the games market, we’ve decided to shift LucasArts from an internal development to a licensing model, minimizing the company’s risk while achieving a broader portfolio of quality Star Wars games. As a result of this change, we’ve had layoffs across the organization. We are incredibly appreciative and proud of the talented teams who have been developing our new titles.”[/blockquote]

While Star Wars 1313 was not mentioned in the statement, videogame website Kotaku is reporting that the game has now been cancelled, along with the planned downloadable game Star Wars: First Assault, and that Disney will just use the LucasArts name to license games now.

This is of course some really disappointing news, as LucasArts has created some great games over the years, and Star Wars 1313 looked like something that was going to be really cool. But hopefully this will be the last of the disappointing news we seem to be getting lately surrounding Star Wars, and we start to hear some more positive announcements about the future of the franchise soon.