Dragon Age III Pushed Back to Focus on Star Wars: The Old Republic

GamesIndustry.biz brings word from video game analyst Michael Pachter that BioWare was forced to pull talent away from Dragon Age III and place them on Star Wars: The Old Republic after the sci-fi MMO lost a significant percentage of its subscribers. And it’s that repositioning that has pushed the as-of-yet unannounced Dragon Age sequel into 2014:

“Dragon Age III appears to have slipped to FY:14. We had previously expected the next Dragon Age to be released in Q4:13, two years after its predecessor. However, we believe that a significant portion of the BioWare team responsible for the game was reassigned to Star Wars in order to create content and fix bugs to keep the game’s audience engaged,” Pachter commented.

BioWare revealed back in March that its Dragon Age team had moved on to the “next phase” rather than build out more DLC for the second title in the franchise.

“What I can say is that we’ve been thinking a lot about Dragon Age – what it means, and where it could go. This past year, we’ve spent a lot of time both going back to the ‘BioWare vault’ of games and re-examining them, and looking at some new possibilities that today’s industry allows,” executive producer Mark Darrah said at the time.