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Relive the Kingdom Hearts 3 E3 announcement
Kingdom Hearts 3 has no official release date yet, but we do know it's coming to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. In the meantime, here's the announcement trailer.
Harmonix and Disney delve into 'Fantasia: Music Evolved' for Kinect
Harmonix is teaming up with Disney to develop Fantasia: Music Evolved, a new motion-driven audio game for Kinect on both Xbox One and Xbox 360. It's not an overt adaptation of the 1940s feature film, but a contemporary, interactive take on Fantasia's evocative melding of music and visual artistry. Nix "Night on Bald Mountain" for Bruno Mars and you're halfway there. You complete songs in Fantasia: Music Evolved by responding in rhythm to on-screen symbols and willing your feeble sausage arms into various pushes and directional swipes. You can also augment the music and its accompanying input pattern at several points by seamlessly swiping into one of two different possible remixes. In a demo shown to press, I was able to switch to an oddly formal but pleasant orchestral rendition of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody." Harmonix has also included a strong freestyle component in Fantasia, reflected in abstract but intuitive symbols that allow further augmentation of the current track. Drawing shapes on a sphere with your hand, in one example, can create new instrumentation and layer that on top of the active track. Once a song is completed, it spills into the level hub and gradually enriches the environment. One such hub, "The Shoal," is an aquatic playground for fish that becomes more dynamic as you complete songs and prod the scenery back to life and sound. The musical progression, so perceivably tied to the gorgeous environments, does conjure memories of Fantasia, even though the two share no characters – save for a certain wizard. Fantasia: Music Evolved is currently set to debut in 2014. In the meantime, you can enjoy the game's first trailer (above), in which a bunch of gyrating Bieber-mages duel to the max. The track list as announced thus far is right after the break.%Gallery-190255%
Disney Interactive down $54 million in Q2
By the end of the second quarter of its fiscal year, Disney Interactive was once again the media conglomerate's only unprofitable sector, reporting a $54 million operating income (read: pre-tax) loss for the three month period ending March 31, 2013. This is, however, a 22 percent year-over-year improvement when compared to Q2 2012's reported operating income loss of $70 million. Disney contributes the loss to "growth at our Japan mobile business from a licensing agreement that started in February 2012 and lower acquisition accounting expense at our social games business." No mention is made of Junction Point Studios, which Disney closed in January after lackluster sales of Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two, or of the company's forthcoming game/toy platform Disney Infinity.
EA obtains exclusive rights to Star Wars
Electronic Arts and the Walt Disney Company, which obtained the Star Wars franchise as part of its $4.05 billion acquisition of LucasFilm last year, have signed a multi-year exclusive licensing agreement to develop and publish Star Wars games. "While we don't have any details to share today on specific titles, our development teams are already brimming with design ideas," said EA Labels President Frank Gibeau. "The EA Studios that will develop these games are some of the most innovative and popular creative teams in the world, and include DICE and Visceral, in addition to the BioWare team, which is already developing for the Star Wars franchise." The financial terms of the deal weren't disclosed. EA will develop and publish new Star Wars games for the "core gaming audience" across all interactive platforms and "most popular game genres." Disney will retain certain rights to mobile, social, tablet and online games.
Disney brings out Lasseter for Disney Infinity teaser
Disney is all-in on Disney Infinity. To help make this abundantly clear, here's Pixar's Chief Creative Officer John Lasseter and Avalanche Software (not to be confused with Just Cause developer Avalanche Studios) CEO John Blackburn talking about 'Toy Box.' Infinity is currently scheduled to release in August. %Gallery-187489%
Disney Infinity shows off 'Toy Box' gameplay
The struggling Disney Interactive division's non-mobile hopes and dreams are all-in on Disney Infinity. Here's the company showing off gameplay of the game's Toy Box mode. Disney recently delayed Disney Infinity by two months to "capitalize on the critical fall retail season."
Disney's Planes adapted into Wii U, Wii, 3DS, and DS games this August
All of the recent news about Disney Interactive has been related to layoffs, studio closures, and in general, disappointment. Or Disney Infinity, which has appeared to be the exclusive focus of the division all year. But Disney Interactive has a second game in the works. A game based on Disney's Planes, the Disney-produced, formerly straight-to-DVD spinoff of Cars, will be released on Wii U, Wii, 3DS, and DS on August 6, three days before the movie is released."The game will expand beyond the storyline of the Disney's Planes film," Nintendo reveals, "offering players the opportunity to enjoy the thrill of flight as one of the popular characters from the film."
Closure for Spector: 'Junction Point had a good eight year run'
In an interview with GI.biz, Warren Spector says he has no regrets in the decision to sell his Junction Point studio to Disney in 2007. "Being part of Disney had its ups and downs – what doesn't? – but the last seven years gave me the very best experiences of my professional Life. Seriously. The very, very best. The opposite is true, too, but let's not go there. I want to remember only the good times."As for the studio's eventual closure and uneven commercial success, Spector had this to say: "I don't really understand it, but it is what it is. Junction Point had a good eight year run. We built a great team. We worked on a bunch of cool stuff, even if a lot of it didn't see the light of day (Sleeping Giants... Ninja Gold... some other stuff I can't talk about). And we shipped two triple-A titles which, Metacritic notwithstanding, sold better than any games I've ever worked on and about which I received more – and more heartfelt – fan mail than I've ever received. I'm good with all that."Spector founded Junction Point Studios in 2005. It's best known for producing two Epic Mickey games, the most recent release selling 529,000 copies in the US according to NDP data released in late-January 2013. On the same day the aforementioned sales figures were revealed, Disney shuttered the studio.
Mozilla unveils browser-based Unreal Engine 3 using JavaScript
Firefox producer Mozilla teamed up with Epic Games to bring Unreal Engine 3 to the web, without the need for plugins such as Flash. Mozilla and Epic took only four days to port Epic's engine to the web by using JavaScript code. The results, as demonstrated by this video unveiled at GDC, certainly look impressive.Mozilla engineer director Vladimir Vukicevic told TechCrunch his company's intentions to make the web viable for high-performance games. Mozilla also said it's "opening up the path to web-based games on mobile," revealing it's working with partners that include Disney, EA, and Cut the Rope creator Zeptolab who are using the same JavaScript tech to "bring performance optimizations to their top-rated games."Mozilla's intentions aside, while Unreal Engine 4 may be all shiny new and around the corner, its predecessor is showing it still has the ability to learn new tricks.
Epic Mickey 2 finds the power of Vita this year [update]
Disney Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two hasn't performed as well as Disney might have wanted from such a gigantic effort. The PlayStation Vita port announced by Disney's Twitter feed for UK movie news should help at least a little. And probably at most a little.There's no firm date, though the port is due "later this year," Disney says. This is the first handheld version of Epic Mickey 2; the game launched in November alongside a separate 3DS game, Power of Illusion.Update: A PlayStation Blog post confirms the port, at least for the UK. The Vita version will include touchscreen painting, tilt controls for racing, and online co-op.
Disney Infinity pushed back to Aug. 18 NA, Aug. 20 overseas, Aug. 23 UK
Disney Infinity signs on in North America on August 18, with the international release in most regions set for August 20. Speaking to the New York Times, Disney Interactive co-president John Pleasants said the multiplatform game's two month delay from an initial June window was one of "opportunity" rather than necessity."We could deliver in June if we wanted to," Pleasants told the New York Times. "Will a two-month timing change help us? Sure, of course. It gives us a little more time to add bells and whistles and make sure it really sings and pops."When approached, Disney Interactive provided us with the folllowing statement from Pleasants: "We have moved the launch date for Disney Infinity to August 18 to capitalize on the critical fall retail season."A Disney Interactive spokesperson also told Joystiq the UK release date is August 23.Disney Infinity, which incorporates physical Disney toy figures and spans many of the company's high profile properties, looks a powerful competitor to Activision's Skylanders series. While the New York Times reports Pleasants "downplayed comparisons" between the two franchises, he did say of Skylanders Swap Force's fall release that "it's good to be first and really lean into the most important selling season of the year."
Disney Interactive was Disney's least profitable branch in Q1 2013
Despite revenues of $291 million during the three month period ending December 29, 2012, Disney Interactive's remaining $9 million in operating revenue (read: pre-tax profit) made it the entertainment giant's least profitable division during the first quarter of the fiscal 2013.Still, this was a marked increase over Disney Interactive's Q1 2012 performance, where it posted a loss of $28 million. Being back in black is even more impressive when you consider Interactive's reported an operating loss of $42 million just last August, making it Disney's only unprofitable sector at the time. Disney attributes this year's growth to improved performance in its social gaming businesses in the Japanese market, where a new licensing agreement has increased the amount of Disney-branded hardware and software.Of course, Disney's financial report made no mention of Junction Point or its sordid fate, but that's to be expected since the studio's closure technically happened during the second quarter of fiscal 2013. We may gain some new insight into that situation during the next round of quarterlies, but for now, all we've got to go on is Mickey's increasing popularity in the Land of the Rising Sun.
Disney Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two life-to-date sales 529K in US
Disney's multiplatform Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two sold 529,000 units over November and December of 2012 in the United States, according to new data provided by the NPD group. Joystiq was also informed that sales of Epic Mickey 2, plus Nintendo 3DS title Disney Epic Mickey: The Power of Illusion, across North America reached 695,000 units over the same period. An unconfirmed report previously pegged Epic Mickey 2's sales at 270,000 copies.Disney Epic Mickey developer Junction Point Studios was closed today, with the House of Mouse noting it was due to an ongoing effort to address fast-evolving gaming platforms and the marketplace.Junction Point was the last studio standing of Disney's previous attempt to break into the triple-A "core" market, with many studios lost along the way, including the critically acclaimed Pure and Split/Second developer Black Rock Studios. Disney has readjusted its sights and is now developing Disney Infinity.
Majesco picks up Disney's 'Phineas and Ferb' license, games due in August
While Disney Interactive puts its time and resources into Disney Infinity, it's leaving development of a game based on another of its licenses to Majesco. The publisher will be responsible for the development of a series of new games based on the Disney cartoon Phineas and Ferb, including a multiplatform console/handheld/mobile game coming in August.Licensed Disney kids' games used to be the domain of THQ, but that ended when THQ refocused on "core" games last year. Now it would appear Majesco is picking up where THQ left off.
Rumor: Disney Infinity is a sandbox game for consoles, iOS and Android
Next month, Disney Infinity will be revealed to the press at an event in Los Angeles. Aside from a lenticular invitation, there's nothing else concrete on Disney Infinity right now.According to a Polygon source, what we're going to see is an open-world sandbox game with characters from Disney and Pixar. It mixes elements of Minecraft, such as building, with Just Cause's open-world gameplay – if you played Toy Story 3: The Video Game, it sounds reminiscent of that game's Toy Box mode. In fact, "Toy Box" is a codename for a project that sounds an awful lot like these rumors about Disney Infinity.Disney Infinity is rumored to be on multiple platforms, including current consoles, iOS and Android devices, with development duties falling squarely on Utah-based Avalanche Software, the same developer responsible for Toy Story 3: The Game. According to Polygon's report, the mobile versions of Disney Infinity lacked the building aspects seen in the console versions. It also suggests that Disney considers the game as a "platform" to be expanded with more characters and scenarios as time goes by.
Disney Interactive revealing 'Disney Infinity' next month
Disney Interactive will unveil a new "gaming initative" called Disney Infinity on Jan. 15, according to an invitation received today by Joystiq. Disney Interactive co-president John Pleasants and Disney/Pixar CCO John Lasseter will speak at the event, suggesting that Disney Infinity is a Big Deal. The lenticular card also suggests a big deal.An interview with Disney CEO Robert Iger in October revealed plans for something called "Toy Box," which would have Disney and Pixar characters interacting in games across multiple platforms. It's possible that Disney has renamed that project "Infinity." We'll find out in January.
MMO Family: Winter roundup of kid-friendly MMOs
Winter is always my favorite time of year for family-friendly MMOs. Holiday events tend to be the norm now in most MMOs, but they're tailor-made for games with a younger audience. Winter also seems to usher in lots of new changes and updates as well, so it's time again to revisit some popular titles to play catch up. Over the past year, we've looked at several new titles and visited veteran MMOs titles to see what's changed. From Club Penguin to Pirate101, we'll look at recent updates and upcoming news in MMO Family's winter roundup!
Epic Mickey 2 trailer shows another messy way to enter magical worlds
Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two teaches players about Disney history, friendship and how fun it is to throw paint around your parent's house. Remember kids, popular fantasy teaches us to enter magic worlds by crawling in a wardrobe, following large strangers, or throwing paint everywhere.
Disney's mobile, social push improves its bottom line
Disney Interactive, the arm of Walt's empire that handles video games, saw an operating loss of $216 million for the fiscal year 2012, which ended on September 29. Loss for the quarter came to $76 million, an improvement of $18 million from Q4 2011.Revenue for the year decreased 14 percent from 2011's $982 million, bringing 2012 to $845 million – the $216 million loss, however, improved from 2011's $308 million. Disney attributed the loss improvement to a focus on social games and decreased production of console games:"Improved segment operating results for the year reflected an increase at our social games business.... The reduction in console games product development reflected an ongoing shift from console game releases to mobile and social game releases."In 2011, Disney Interactive shut down all core studios except for Junction Point, the house responsible for the Epic Mickey series. Disney acquired Lucasfilm for $4.05 billion on October 30, and the deal included LucasArts, Industrial Light & Magic and Skywalker Sound, the Star Wars games and effects studios. During the acquisition, Disney said it was likely to develop social and mobile games in the Star Wars universe, leaving console games to licensed third parties.
Disney partners with Smilegate for a new MOBA that includes Marvel characters [Updated]
Ready for another Marvel online title? Or at least a title with Marvel characters? If so, we have good news and bad news. The good is that Disney Interactive just inked a deal with Korean firm Smilegate to develop a MOBA that will include Marvel's iconic heroes among other "mythical and historical heroes." The bad news is that the game is currently slated for Asia and nowhere else. Disney and Smilegate have codenamed the game Project PK. Smilegate is primarily known for CrossFire, a free-to-play online shooter originally released in 2007. [Update: We've corrected this article to reflect the fact that Project PK will include not only Marvel characters but also other characters; it is not strictly a "Marvel MOBA." The press release clarifies: "Pop-culture icons such as Spider-Man, Iron Man, the Hulk and more will join the battle along with mythical and historical heroes as part of the game to be launched in 2014 in Asia."]
