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Development on the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic remake is reportedly on pause indefinitely after developer Aspyr Media fired several key individuals on the project and is reassessing what’s next.
According to a report from Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, the team at Aspyr working on the KOTOR remake delivered a demo to partners Lucasfilm Ltd. and Sony at the end of June. While the team felt like things were on track, the demo seems to have ultimately not met expectations.
“One person familiar with the discussions suggested that a disproportionate amount of time and money had gone into the demo and that the project’s current course wasn’t sustainable.”
The Austin-based studio had been working on the anticipated Knights of the Old Republic remake for about three years now. While the original development proposal said that their goal was to release by the end of 2022, things were supposedly so far behind with the demo, that “a more realistic target now would be 2025”.
After this, Aspyr fired design director Brad Prince and art director Jason Minor, later telling other developers in the company this month that things are on indefinite pause with the project and they are seeking new opportunities and figuring out what comes next.
Aspyr is a studio that is perhaps most well known for helping port games to other platforms and worked on bringing the original Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic to iOS. The company was acquired last year in Embracer Group.
Meanwhile, back in May, it was announced that Saber Interactive would be joining Aspyr on development of the remake, in what Embracer Group board member Matthew Karch called “a massive, massive product”, when discussing the partnership. Now that the project is on hold at Aspyr, and perhaps dropped completely, speculation is happening as to whether or not Saber might take over the project completely.
With three years of development already done, and apparent displeasure over the potential timeline it would have taken for Aspyr to complete the project, a company that could step in quickly enough to save it might be the best bet.
