LucasArts is currently in the midst of an executive shakeup, as Kotaku received confirmation today that President Darrell Rodriguez and several other top executives have resigned from the company. Taking Rodriguez's place while LucasArts searches for a full-time replacement will be Lucasfilm's Jerry Bowerman.
The departures were announced at a LucasArts staff meeting, and it's not clear why Rodriguez and the other unnamed execs are leaving. The moves are not expected to have any impact on LucasArts' development teams, or other aspects of its publishing business, Kotaku said.
Rodriguez is stepping down roughly two years after taking the role when LucasArts went through another sudden management change: the surprising departure of Jim Ward in April 2008. Rodriguez's tenure during the last two years has had its ups and downs. LucasArts has had plenty of success with Star Wars and Indiana Jones titles (like the Lego games and Force Unleashed), but new IP like Fracture had disappointed.
1 Comments
May 7, 2010
One can only assume when you see something like this that these people leaving disagree with some business decision that is being made "higher up". If it were more amicable and planned, you'd expect them to do things quietly and stagger the various folks departures over a longer time period, etc.
So one can assume that some radical or contentious change is being made to the business. That could be anything from winding down internal development to become a pure publishing house, winding down everything and become a licensor, or selling the operation to another company.
Lucas has flirted with all those ideas at one time or another, so none of them seem out of the question.
What seems most unlikely is continuing on as they currently exist.