Someone posted this in a related thread on another forum:

"
Not sure if this has come up (may have missed it) but I posit a potential reason for the use of three compatible cores.



Back in the wotc days of the license, back in the 2000-2005 days, they had IIRC a restriction in their license that they could only produce 4 books per year related to the RPG. That was a single quarterly release. Now, looking back at the release schedule for EotE, this was about the release rate for those books over the last year and a half, or so.



When the first rebellion splat was announced, I was concerned that it would mean that an edge book wouldn't come out Q4 but then the hutt book was announced.



"What's the point?" you ask? Well, lets say that FFG's license prevents them from issuing more than one book per quarter, per game line. So rolling out the Cores as three separate games may give them more latitude regarding releases, and allow them to tailor their output better than making the system a single core release.



I have not knowledge of the FFG-lucas licensing arrangements. But if these are in anyway similar, then I would not surprised if something like this plays into the decision a little.