Jester,

Acknowledging that GME must've said something global for all the vg's to sell off simultaneously. But SWBF is an intriguing, and possibly unhappy story. (You know the old story - I can't copy and paste so let me summarize): I read an article that was an interview with George Lucas. In a nutshell, he basically distanced himself as  far as he possibly could from this game - it was clear that he wanted to completely bow out because he didn't want people blaming him for a sucky game. He was more polite of course - saying that although he was an adviser to EA in the beginning, EA was basically uninterested in what he had to say. So he eventually felt pretty much the same - his words were that the product was 'not going in a direction' that he had imagined for the franchise, so he stopped giving advice. I think that's thin code for 'this game sucks and I want to be clear it's not my fault.' And it certainly sounds like EA to be pretentious enough to see the author as a PITA. 

I *think* last time I saw it on Metacritic it was averaging in the low to mid 70's - some of user reviews were pretty rabid. I think I said here a while ago that I thought there were enough people ga-ga about Star Wars that it probably didn't matter how good or bad the game was. I'm not so sure I'd stand behind that statement now. Disclosure: I thought the first SW film sucked. The second was mildly interesting, and after that it wasn't worth bothering with.I also lost a lot of respect Lucas - in the glow of the success of the film Lucas said that he was a fan of Akira Kurosawa - legendary Japanese director of 'The Seven Samurai', etc. I saw an obscure (and really unremarkable film Kurosawa did around 1958) called "The Hidden Fortress". It had a princess who lost her empire and pleaded for a Samurai's help to regain it. ("Help me, Obiwan?*) The samurai (Toshiro Mifune) had two slapstick-idiot soldiers under his command that provided comic relief throughout the film. (Funny Robots, anyone?) By the end of it, it was clear that Lucas was not simply a 'fan' of Kurosawa, but lifted the the whole damn plot from this midieval setting to a futuristic one. Plagarism isn't cool in my book,regardless how good or bad what's being 'lifted' was.