Kotaku has the info that Disney has closed the Lucas Arts studio.

The staff were informed of the shutdown this morning, according to a reliable Kotaku source. Some 150 people were laid off, and both of the studio's current projects—Star Wars: First Assault and Star Wars 1313—were cancelled. Disney will still use the LucasArts name to license games, but the studio is no more.

Publicly, Disney is saying their current games could be licensed out to a different publisher or developer, but according to our source, that's unlikely. Our source says Lucas has pursued the option for "one or both games," but nothing happened. "With the teams now basically being dispersed I think both games are effectively dead forever," our source said.

Several sites have noticed a job ad from LucasArts looking for a "gameplay engineer" for an "open-world RPG". There's no other significant detail but Star Wars is the focus of their internal development studio, so unsurprisingly several sites are suggesting a "real" KotOR 3. We'll have to wait to find the answer but here's a snip from the newsbit at Eurogamer:

The maker of Star Wars The Force Unleashed is hiring for an openworld role-playing game.

A job ad for a gameplay engineer, Tweeted by LucasArts' Clint Hocking, mentions the genre of the game.

Hocking was the creative director of Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory and Far Cry 2 at Ubisoft.

He left in May 2010 after nearly nine years at the company to work as creative director for LucasArts on an unannounced game.

The job advertisement calls for console development experience, suggesting the mystery game will at least appear on home consoles.

Thanks, Frozen Fireball!

The title says it all. I know this is not an RPG, but as this series is extremely popular with most of our readers I felt it worthy of sharing the news here. Should be available during the northern summer and you'll find all the details at the official site.

Margaret Grohne, director of public relations for LucasArts has told Joystiq that Lucas Arts are not ending internal development.

According to Grohne, the layoffs are not the result of a shift away from internal product development. "We remain committed to both our internal teams and working with external partners," Ghrone told Joystiq, adding that "[sites] are definitely reading too much into the layoffs; [LucasArts] is not halting internal development."

To that end, Ghrone stated that no titles have been canceled or put on-hold as a result of the layoffs, and that the company is "very proud" of the work done by the internal team creating Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, as well as that done by the staff of Day 1 Studios, who are developing the upcoming original IP Fracture for LucasArts.

Shack News reports that a reliable source has informed them that Lucas Arts is set to lay off 100 more employees as they close shop on internal development.

Following word of routine terminations at developer LucasArts, a reliable source has informed Shacknews that the company plans to cease internal development and fire roughly 100 more employees after the completion of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.

LucasArts is known to have at least one other title, an Indiana Jones game, in development. Shacknews was told that, following the team's termination, all other partially-completed internal projects will be outsourced, a move that fits with earlier rumblings.

Kotaku has news of LucasArts layoffs amounting to 75-100 people (apparently around 80% of the workforce), as well as rumours of games in development from (apparently) disgruntled ex-employees - no prizes for guessing a BioWare-made KotOR3 MMO is in the list.  Time will tell.