I apologize if this was already posted, but I didn't see it anywhere.

Yet another side as to what may have happened to Star Wars Battlefront 3. I think the worst news to come out of this is that there was a Star Wars Battlefront 4 being made. Then, if this is to be believed, new management at LucasArts came in and screwed the project over. Granted, this is only one view. I have found another from a former dev at Rebellion (it's about 3/4 down the page) that seemed to imply that LucasArts was not happy with Free Radical's progress and canned that version of the game.

Here's the article for those of you who are interested.

Edit: Another article covers basically the same stuff. They were slated to work on a Goldeneye sequel, but that fell through. This seems to suggest that SWBF3 was basically done though, and that they were just going back and fixing things up.

Star Wars Battlefront 3 & 4 Were Worked On By TimeSplitters Dev (source)

"Before development of the long-awaited Star Wars Battlefront 3 collapsed a few years ago, the now-defunct developer Free Radical Design was working on the game and even a successor to a game that wasn't even out.

The studio's co-founder Steve Ellis told GamesIndustry International that the developer held a strong relationship with LucasArts, who are the current IP holder of Star Wars.

"They were big fans of our work, they liked our take on making games, they liked the way we work and they wanted to do this project. It was a big thing, we were very excited and for a long time it was going very well."

At the end of 2007, a year after the deal to work on the game was signed, LucasArts approached Free Radical Design to work on another Battlefront title.

"We were still at that time probably a year out from completing and releasing the first game and they asked us to sign up for the sequel. That was a big deal for us because it meant putting all our eggs in one basket. It was a critical decision - do we want to bet on LucasArts?" he said. "And we chose to because things were going as well as they ever had. It was a project that looked like it would probably be the most successful thing we had ever done and they were asking us to make the sequel to it too. It seemed like a no-brainer."

While Lost Planet 3 studio Spark Unlimited is high believed to be developing Star Wars Battlefront 3 (insomniac17: Spark is no longer favoured to be developing the game. Their other unannounced title is a 3rd person action/horror game), it was a mystery as to why the game was halted despite its completion stages. Ellis explained:

"The really good relationship that we'd always had suddenly didn't exist anymore, They brought in new people to replace them and all of a sudden we were failing milestones. That's not to say there were no problems with the work we were doing because on a project that size inevitably there will be, there's always going to be grey areas were things can either pass or fail. And all of a sudden we were failing milestones, payments were being delayed and that kind of thing."

"It was a change of direction for LucasArts as a company rather than for the games that we were working on," continued Ellis. "I think what had happened was the new management had been bought in to replace the old and given an impossible mandate. It was a financial decision basically and the only way they could achieve what they had been told to do was to can some games and get rid of a bunch of staff. So that's what they did but it was quite a long, drawn out process.

Due to the layoffs and a shift of focus from LucasArts, both Star Wars Battlefront 3 and 4 became cancelled with the former in its final QA stages. Battlefront 4, meanwhile, was at an early tech stage, but Free Radical did hire more employees in order to further its development.

After their time with LucasArts, Activision approached the developer, who were bought by Crytek to form Crytek UK, regarding the creation of the next GoldenEye game.

'As you can imagine that was something that was very well-received by a lot of the staff, it was going to be a great project to work on. But as we jumped at the opportunity it suddenly disappeared. We never got a real explanation about why it disappeared. I suspect it was to do with rights about which platforms a GoldenEye sequel could be released on.'"

Edit: Courtesy of Sal.Paradise;

Unwilling to blow cash on triple-A marketing, LucasArts eventually canned both (suspected) Battlefront titles, offering Free Radical a fraction of their contracted fee. Ellis and his cohorts picked the lesser of two evils. "We had an impossible choice. We could either try and fight them to get what we thought we were due or accept their offer of a smaller amount. We didn't have loads of money in the bank so we had to take the money and try to find something else to make up the shortfall."

Later on in the article:

"LucasArts' opinion is that when you launch a game you have to spend big on the marketing and they're right. But at that time they were, for whatever reason, unable to commit to spending big. They effectively canned a game that was finished."

From: http://www.oxm.co.uk/40977/battlefront-3s-tragic-death-they-effectively-canned-a-game-that-was-finished/

It's ridiculous what happened to BF3. This gen really pales in comparison to last gen when it comes to star wars games.

The worst part for me is that if this latest bit of news is true, not only did the game look great based on that leaked footage from way back, but it was also nearly done, barring the final QA phase.

And I agree that they've really dropped the ball on Star Wars games this gen. Big name titles include... Kinect Star Wars... The Force Unleashed and its sequel... Renegade/Elite Squadron for PSP, which were fun but nowhere near the same level as the console games... and The Old Republic, which while it has been fun, is just not the sort of game I was hoping for. I'm not really an MMO guy; I'd much rather have a KOTOR 3.

I'm not sold on this company, the last good game they released was in 2005 - After that they gave us Haze and eventually worked on Crysis 2. Just because this game was called Battlefront III doesn't mean it would have been good.

That's true. All we have to judge is the leaked videos. But based on those, I do think that the game would have been great. It looked like it was working well. Combat was in there (though animations weren't fully done in the recently released videos) and the game looked great. It sounded like Star Wars. The ground/space battle tech was in there and working, and it looked like it was working well.

At the very least, I don't think it would have been worse than Elite Squadron for PSP, which is mainly held back by the controls (which are some of the worst controls I've ever used) and the hardware which can't handle the ground/space battles well... and the story, but it's not like I ever played the first two for their story or anything.

Something missing from that article, curiously:

After the paragraph ending "...long, drawn out process" comes this: 

Unwilling to blow cash on triple-A marketing, LucasArts eventually canned both (suspected) Battlefront titles, offering Free Radical a fraction of their contracted fee. Ellis and his cohorts picked the lesser of two evils. "We had an impossible choice. We could either try and fight them to get what we thought we were due or accept their offer of a smaller amount. We didn't have loads of money in the bank so we had to take the money and try to find something else to make up the shortfall."

Later on in the article:

"LucasArts' opinion is that when you launch a game you have to spend big on the marketing and they're right. But at that time they were, for whatever reason, unable to commit to spending big. They effectively canned a game that was finished."

From: http://www.oxm.co.uk/40977/battlefront-3s-tragic-death-they-effectively-canned-a-game-that-was-finished/

Thanks, I'll add that to the OP. If all this is true, it's a shame that it happened. Especially if the game was finished. I don't understand why they wouldn't have been willing to spend money to advertise what was sure to be a pretty good selling game.

Poor management and little understanding of the industry, is my guess.

Instead we get this:

^^^ Not to mention all the Lego Star Wars games and others based on LucasFilm properties like the two Lego Indy games.