The two best-reviewed Star Wars games of the year did not come from a publishing giant, and Lucasfilm Games says that is exactly the point. Bit Reactor's Star Wars Zero Company and Fuse Games' Star Wars Galactic Racer both landed to strong reviews in 2026, and Lucasfilm Games VP Douglas Reilly has confirmed that handing the galaxy to smaller, independent teams is a deliberate part of the plan rather than a happy accident.
"It very much is part of the strategy," Reilly said on The Game Business Show. "Obviously, huge AAA games like Battlefront are always going to be an essential part of the strategy. But one of the great things about Star Wars is it has all kinds of other opportunities to tell stories in different genres. The goal has been to find the best partner to bring that experience to life inside the galaxy far, far away. And it doesn't have to always be AAA; sometimes it can be AA, and it's really about the experience that we're delivering and the fantasy we're fulfilling."
Reilly added that the door is open wider than it used to be, and that the best partner is not automatically the biggest one. "We've tried to be more flexible about who we're willing to take pitches from," he explained. "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. 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."
The results back the approach up. Star Wars Galactic Racer is the highest-rated Star Wars game in 20 years, while Star Wars Zero Company sits as the joint second highest-rated title in the franchise. Neither studio is a newcomer in disguise, though: Bit Reactor is stacked with veterans of the XCOM series, and Fuse Games was founded by former Criterion Games developers who worked on Burnout and Need for Speed, as well as the Battlefront games during their time at EA. The pattern is independent studios with serious resumes, not untested teams.
None of this means the blockbuster side of the strategy is going away. The Battlefront series has been a commercial powerhouse for Lucasfilm, selling through 33 million units combined as of 2019, and Reilly's comments keep AAA titles as an essential pillar. The biggest Star Wars game currently in development, the single-player RPG Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic, even follows the new pattern itself — it is being built by Arcanaut Studios, a brand-new developer, under Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect veteran Casey Hudson.
Lucasfilm is not alone in rethinking who gets the keys to a major franchise. Konami has revived Silent Hill in recent years by entrusting it to outside developers including Bloober Team, NeoBards Entertainment and Screen Burn Interactive, and the series has been on a hot streak since. If Reilly's tease about partners who will "surprise folks" is anything to go by, the next Star Wars announcement could come from a studio nobody has on their bingo card.
