Ultima Franchise Gets New Producer

According to a report from Ultima Aiera Jeff Skalski from BioWare Mythic has been nominated producer for the Ultima franchise, his responsibilities including Ultima Online, as he himself stated on Twitter while asked by TheUOJournal:

You found me. 😉 Yes, I’m the Ultima Franchise Producer & UO is now one of the projects I’m responsible for. Nice to meet you.

The fact that he remarks that he’s responsible for the Ultima franchise as a whole hints that EA may have an interest in reawakening the dormant franchise for something more than publishing updates for the venerable MMO, as already hinted by things like the recent migration of the first two Ultima trilogies to Good Old Games, though, of course, at this point this is nothing more than speculation.

In the meanwhile, it’s worth noting that Jeff already acquainted himself with the community with a post on the Ultima Online Stratics forums:

Just wanted to stop by and say hi to everyone. I got a lot of catching up to do as you can imagine with getting reacquainted with UO. It’s been over 10 years since I’ve played and a lot has changed since then as many of you know. Regardless, the team has run me through what they have planned for the next couple of publishes and cool things are coming. Right now I’m focused on doing everything I can with getting us through the remaining migration issues. I know it hasn’t been as seamless of an experience as we originally hoped for some people, but we have more fixes in the works.

See you online,

Jeff

One can hope that, if EA really is interested in the IP again, they won’t just publish a shooter title with the Ultima name. Time will tell.