Taking its cue, perhaps, from Star Wars: Battlefront II’s great disturbance in the Force, the publisher has confirmed that its X-Wing-versus-TIE-Fighter-’em-up spaceship sim isn’t going to feature microtransactions or other live service fixtures. Not at launch, anyway.
Talking to Game Informer, EA’s Motive Studios creative director Ian Frazier explains that Star Wars: Squadrons is “old school”, the kind of game even that nostalgic fans might remember from a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away (sorry, not sorry).
“Our mindset has been very old school. We’re trying to say with this game that we have a $40 price point, we want to feel generous to players, and we want it to feel like a complete experience. Like ‘You gave us your $40. Here’s a game that you will love. Thank you.’ That’s it. This isn’t something we are building around a live-service strategy. It’s built around a game that is complete and great in its own right. That’s not to say we will never add anything, I guess we could, but it’s not presented as a live service.”
Whether or not subsequent DLC is planned, however, is a totally different thing – but subsequent DLC for 2019’s Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, which also launched without microtransactions, has been free, so. Maybe there’s… a new hope. I’ll stop now.
Star Wars: Squadrons is out on PC, PS4, and Xbox One on 2 October.