Originally posted by: mvertaWe certainly
could, that's for sure. Personally, I believe that would only happen post-George's death. I began work on the Legacy Edition only after people who would know, suggested as much. Basically, there are people I trust - you would, too - who told me "forget it" and told me why. And I was thoroughly convinced.
So going by what you've said earlier in this thread, this is an opinion you have formed based on information and knowledge you have access to through actually working for Lucasfilm, that is access to resources which are under confidential agreements? If that is correct, then please accept this token of appreciation for your posts from someone who as much as possible tries to stay within the boundaries of rational and truthful reason.
As for myself, since I don't have any of this direct knowledge, I can only make educated guesses based on what Lucasfilm does, and deduce their intentions by comparing those actions to similar actions made by other people and corporate entities for which the intentions are at least partially or fully known to me. Since that sort of extrapolative analysis tends to branch off into chaos and pure speculation rather quickly, I admit that I haven't spent too much time on it, but my guess about Lucas' intentions, going by what I see, can be summed up as follows:
Lucas(film) quite clearly wants to earn as much money as possible off the Star Wars franchise (for himself, for his family and for whatever other personal reasons), and the best way to do that is obviously to keep the franchise going. However, releasing exactly the products the market wants immediately would be to cut off a viable revenue stream prematurely, so rather than throwing away profit, they instead exploit the marketing opportunities of giving people almost, but not quite, what they want. This is accomplished through an iterative product cycle, the properties for which is determined mostly by financial and marketing fundamentals. The product cycle consists of releasing various incarnations of the same product in sequence until the market for the basic item is saturated. When the lifespan of one (or perhaps a group of) such product in the franchise is nearing the end, some of the gained profit is reinvested in order to come up with a new product to start the cycle going over again and thus keep the franchise going. In the case of Star Wars, this is likely the investing and marketing model which will yield the maximum amount of profit from it over a human lifetime. This is also an excellent way of catching the focus of the media and generating some buzz from time to time as Lucas himself sees fit, so as to cater to one of his most important secondary interests, namely to portray himself as a visionary artist and filmmaker.
Oh, and mverta, if the above is reduced to no more than mindless speculation when held up against the truth as you know it, have no hesitations about telling me. Actually, I'd be quite interested to know! On the other hand, if you instead remain silent I might just think I'm onto something.
(Just kidding.)
And don't think I'm not tempted every day to put Legacy out, which with a couple of good torrent seeds, would put right a shitload of wrongs. You would also see a legal smackdown ensue of galactic proportions. But regardless, I just can't bring myself to do it. Just not how I roll.
