Star Wars Battlefront 3 Rumors Heat Up: DICE and Respawn Involved?

Have you been dreaming of a new Star Wars Battlefront game? Well, you're not alone – and this week, the rumor mill went into overdrive. Talk of Star Wars Battlefront 3 has ramped up, with multiple studios reportedly in the running to develop the shooter sequel. It all started when Giant Bomb's Jeff Grubb read out a snippet from Electronic Gaming Monthly's revived Quarterman column, which claimed Disney has "big plans" for the Star Wars Battlefront series.

According to EGM, Lucasfilm is looking for a development partner for Battlefront 3, and two studios are "circling" the project: DICE, the developer behind Battlefield and the previous Battlefront games, and Bungie, known for Halo, Destiny, and Marathon. The idea of a new Battlefront is hugely exciting for fans, and if it does get greenlit, DICE would be the obvious choice to develop it. But how that would fit with the ongoing work on the Battlefield series remains to be seen. Bungie, though, would be a huge surprise. The Sony-owned studio is currently working to turn around its struggling extraction shooter Marathon, and only last month Bungie said more Destiny is coming, months after ending support for Destiny 2. It feels unlikely that Bungie would have the scope to make a fully fleshed-out Battlefront 3, at least not any time soon. Would parent company Sony even be receptive to such an idea? Would Bungie?

Plot twist! Joe Brammer, boss of Wardogs developer Bulkhead, just… tweeted it out. But rather than Bungie, it's Titanfall, Apex Legends, and Star Wars Jedi developer Respawn that's working with DICE on Battlefront 3, according to Brammer. "DICE and from what I've heard Respawn are working on Battlefront 3," he said on X/Twitter. "Not sure what that means for Battlefield." So what's actually going on here? Well, it doesn't sound like Battlefront 3 is in production yet, if Lucasfilm is on the hunt for development partners. But it's entirely plausible that DICE and Respawn have done pre-production work, fleshing out what the game will be and how it will work, while looking for studios to help build it.

Before you get your hopes up, it's worth remembering that Battlefront fans have been here before. TimeSplitters developer Free Radical Design had a Battlefront 3 game that was pretty much done before it fell by the wayside around 2008. Assets and even builds of the game have leaked online ever since. EA eventually had DICE pick up the mantle and reboot the series with the hugely popular Star Wars Battlefront in 2015. But its sequel, 2017's Battlefront 2, suffered a disastrous launch fueled by a backlash to loot boxes. DICE spent years righting the ship, to the point now where Battlefront 2 is held in pretty high regard. If DICE is working on Battlefront 3 in some capacity, it'll do so without much of the original development team, which scattered to various studios in Sweden and abroad in the wake of Battlefront 2's release. Some of the developers went to Embark, developer of The Finals and Arc Raiders. Indeed, some have already suggested Embark as the perfect fit for a Battlefront 3.

Star Wars video games are in a positive moment, with the positive reception to Bit Reactor's strategy game Zero Company and Fuse Games' Galactic Racer sparking excitement over what might come next from the franchise. Lucasfilm Games vice president Douglas Reilly recently told The Game Business that "huge triple-A games like Battlefront are always going to be an essential part of the strategy," but smaller-scale games in different genres are also in the works. "Good ideas can come from a lot of different places. You don't have to necessarily be a top five publisher to make a great Star Wars game," he continued. "There are some hurdles. We have a high quality bar, and that means typically we work with more experienced teams than ones with no track record. But we're exploring all kinds of things, large and small, with partners that are going to surprise folks." Bungie would certainly fit the bill.

So, what do you think? Are you excited about the possibility of Battlefront 3, or are you taking these rumors with a grain of salt? Let us know in the comments!