Star Wars: Battlefront 3 is one of gaming's biggest what-ifs.
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Not to be confused with EA Dice's Star Wars Battlefront games from the late 2010s, the original pair of Star Wars: Battlefront was a huge hit among critics and audiences alike. Fans, in particular, loved how the games let players take part in some of the biggest battles in the history of Star Wars. Initially, a third game was in development before LucasArts ultimately canceled the game.
Fast forward to today and images of what could have been an early build of Battlefront 3 have popped up online.
According to u/MissFeepit, they have what could be the only copy of a working PSP disc for a Star Wars Battlefront 3 playtest. To prove its legitimacy, the user uploaded several photos of the game plugged in and running on the PlayStation Portable. The Redditor explains that they got the disc through a family friend who playtested for LucasArts at the time of Battlefront 3's development. Apparently, the family friend forgot to return the PSP disc and they completely forgot about it until recently, when they posted it online to feel out offers and see how much the copy could fetch them.
The series of images, which includes a loading screen, main menu, as well as a single-player game mode selection screen, all suggest that Battlefront 3 was much more further along than expected. However, as is always the case with these "leaks", some users can't help but spoil the fun for everyone else.
As pointed out by multiple Redditors, the photos are more likely an early build of Star Wars Battlefront: Elite Squadron, a PSP spin-off that came out in 2009.
My fiancé has a playtest copy of the canceled Star Wars: Battlefront III for PSP from gaming
Regardless of what the early build is actually for, the most interesting part here is what the Redditor can do about the disc. As others suggested, they could copy its content to export it to a ROM file to help preserve the build. However, this could have legal implications. Also, if the owner does end up selling it, there's also the question if it's legally their right to sell the disc as they don't own the contents. Technically, they don't even own the playtest disc since they were supposed to give it back to LucasArts.
All legal problems aside, we're just happy knowing that the days of LucasArts canceling Star Wars games are over. If anything, there are too many Star Wars projects in development.
The floodgates opened as soon as EA lost exclusive rights to Star Wars video games. These days, we've got everyone from Respawn Entertainment to Quantic Dream and Ubisoft as well as Amy Hennig all working on a Star Wars project.