It’s no surprise that Disney shut down its gaming division
No one should have been surprised by Disney’s announcement that it would cancel the Disney Infinity series and shut down its video game business. However, when the news went live, Twitter immediately lit up with shock. My phone buzzed with questions and incredulity from friends. Hell, even I gasped when I read the blog post.
The surprise was justified. Disney Infinity was a respectable and adored franchise in the toys-to-life category, and its developer, Avalanche Software, was held in high regard. Infinity entered the fray in 2013, two years after the original toys-to-life series, Skylanders, debuted. Financially, Infinity single-handedly turned around Disney’s gaming division, Disney Interactive.
Disney Infinity is such a strangely great game. I never expected it. Terrific figures and art. Very sad to see it canceled.
— Mitch Dyer (@MitchyD) May 10, 2016
Disney Infinity was the tenth-best selling game of 2013, hitting 3 million sales by January 2014. In the year after the original game’s release, Disney Interactive posted its first annual operating profit in recent memory. As more games and figurines hit the stores, Infinity carried the Interactive division to profitability, again and again. By December 2015, Infinity was estimated to be the number-one toys-to-life franchise, outselling both Skylanders and LEGO Dimensions. Sales started to waver by early 2016, though the franchise was far from failing.
And then it was over. In a blog post this week, Disney Interactive SVP John Blackburn announced that the series was canceled and Disney later clarified that it was done making video games, full stop. Avalanche, a studio of roughly 300 people, was shut down.
Again, our surprise was justified — but we really should have seen it coming. In fact, Disney set the stage for disappointment early on in Infinity’s life cycle.
Back in February 2013, just months before Infinity debuted on the world stage, Walt Disney CEO Robert Iger told Wall Street analysts that if the series didn’t perform well, he would likely tear down the company’s gaming division and switch to an all-licensing model. Between 2008 and 2013, Disney Interactive had accumulated losses of $1.41 billion.
Surprising, sad news here. I had thought for sure that those Disney Infinity figures were a goldmine. RIP Avalanche: https://t.co/0jZC4XJrYP
— Ryan McCaffrey (@DMC_Ryan) May 10, 2016
“If Infinity does well, it bodes very well for the bottom line of this unit,” Iger said at the time. “If it doesn’t do well, the opposite will be the case.”
Disney Infinity did do well, but not well enough. In a world where competitors are increasingly targeting digital releases, it’s incredibly expensive to manufacture retail games — let alone toys-to-life titles that require a lineup of action figures hitting stores throughout the year. For a mega-corporation like Disney, which has to manage its franchises for film, books, TV and various other formats, it’s more cost effective to license its games to the highest bidder with the best resources. Disney gets to pick the studio it wants, rather than run the one it has.
Besides, Infinity couldn’t touch the numbers brought in by Star Wars: Battlefront, a series that Disney licensed to a third-party studio (EA) for development and publishing.
Disney Interactive saw a decrease in operating revenue and income in the second quarter of 2016, and the company mentioned these retail and licensing factors in its earnings report: “Lower operating income was primarily due to… lower operating margins and comparable store sales at our retail business and lower results for Infinity. These decreases were partially offset by higher licensing revenues.”
Dear Avalanche Software and everyone who worked on @DisneyInfinity… pic.twitter.com/wzYva05tQh
— Greg Miller (@GameOverGreggy) May 11, 2016
Even without the tremendous amount of pressure placed on Disney Infinity to succeed, and without the exit strategy that executives laid out before the game even launched, Avalanche was on shaky ground. Not because of its own performance — but simply because it was a video game studio.
The video game industry is volatile. Across the globe, studios come and go seemingly on the whims of a cruel god; even successful or beloved companies are regularly hit with layoffs and closures. The 2015 IGDA Developer Satisfaction Survey found that 65 percent of developers held permanent jobs, but that over the past five years, they reported having an average of 2.7 employers. “This indicates that employees are often hired and let go,” the IGDA concluded.
Volatility is basically a running joke in the industry — even though it’s a life-shattering reality for many developers. Avalanche was headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, a region that now boasts an extra 300 unemployed, experienced video game developers. There are a handful of other studios in the state, including Epic Games subsidiary cHair — but the industry doesn’t exist in Utah the same way it does in Los Angeles, San Francisco or Montreal. If they want to stay in gaming, a lot of these folks will have to move.
Disney Infinity brings a lot of joy to my house. Saddened as a gamer about the Avalanche closure and the employees affected. ❤
— Mike Futter (@Futterish) May 11, 2016
Or, they’ll risk it all to start independent studios. Plenty of laid-off developers have gone indie and found success, though in most cases it’s a grueling and uncertain road.
Avalanche and Disney Interactive as a whole are the latest losses in an extremely expensive, challenging and unpredictable industry — one that Disney doesn’t need to stress over quite as much anymore. We shouldn’t be surprised when good studios go under, but we will be because from the outside, it just doesn’t make sense.
It’s not a surprise that Disney shut down its gaming division. It’s just business.
The new ‘Ace Attorney’ lands in September
Phoenix Wright and his band of lawyers, circus performers and spirit mediums are making their way to North America and Europe. The newest installment for the courtroom-slash-visual-novel franchise Ace Attorney will be released in the West in September this year. It’s called Spirit of Justice and will (unfortunately) only be available as a digital download from the Nintendo eShop, just like Dual Destinies, for $30 (£25 / €30).
The 3DS game is set in the Kingdom of Khura’in, where lawyers are persecuted and trials are conducted by spirit séances. Best thing about it is that it’s bringing back beloved characters from the older installments, including Miles Edgeworth, Ema Skye and even Wright’s original ramen burger-loving sidekick Maya Fey. What would make it even better, though, is if its success leads to the North American and European release of The Great Ace Attorney. Because we’re sure a lot of fans would love to play Wright’s ancestor and solve cases with Sherlock Holmes.
Source: Capcom
‘Assassin’s Creed’ movie trailer has fighting and Fassbending
We won’t have a new Assassin’s Creed game this year, but what we will have is a movie. And now we know just what it’ll look like when it hits theaters this December 21st, courtesy of a trailer that just debuted on the late-night talk show, Jimmy Kimmel Live. It looks appropriately stabby and features tons of the series’ hallmark moments: a massive cityscape shot from above, an abducted protagonist by way of Michael Fassbender, eagles flying around spires, a leap of faith off of a very tall building, and, of course lots of folks in hoods looking ready to kill assassinate folks during the Spanish Inquisition.
Kanye West’s “I Am a God” sets the tone for the clip pretty nicely, too. Based on this early look, it’ll be a shame if it doesn’t turn out better than gaming juggernaut Ubisoft’s other game-to-movie adaptation, 2010’s Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.
Source: Jimmy Kimmel Live (YouTube)
‘Civilization’ reinvents itself again this October
It’s been a long time coming, but a new Civ, Civilization VI, will hit PC this October. Traditionally Civ games have come every four or five years, but the release of the Beyond Earth spin-off in 2014 and its subsequent Rising Tide expansion appear to have pushed things back a little. So… what’s new in Civilization VI? It’s early days still, but the short answer appears to be “lots.”
The biggest change discards a rule introduced in Civilization V: one unit per tile. While you could technically place military units together with civilian ones, you will now be able to combine many units for combat bonuses or protection reasons. This will get rid of some serious pain points from earlier games, but also introduce new tactical elements.
Early in a Civilization V campaign, for example, you had to flank a settler unit with warriors, or hope barbarians did not capture them. Likewise, workers building roads out in the open were a big risk, and you had to keep on moving a warrior along with them. Now, you’ll simply be able to combine a settler or worker unit with a warrior unit to ensure they can’t randomly be jumped. Later on in the game cycle, you’ll be able to combine different military units to create better-rounded armies. Think about combining an anti-tank unit with an infantry unit to cover one another’s weaknesses. You could also combine two units of the same type for a new ultra-powerful “Corps” unit. This will seriously change the way combat works. While older Civ titles let you stack units on a single tile, they did not act as a single unit as they will in Civilization VI.
In another shake-up, the way cities expand is changing. In previous Civ games, a city itself took up a single tile, with only the land borders around it expanding. Now, cities will physically expand to consume tiles around them. You’ll be able to plan out the layout of each settlement, making individual cities more unique — a military city might have a very different layout to a farming town. You’ll have to craft cities based on the terrain around them to take full advantage of nearby resources.
Diplomacy and Research are also seeing an overhaul. Your conversations with other leaders will change significantly depending on which age — stone, bronze, etc. — you’re in. This makes a ton of sense compared to the static diplomacy of the past. Expect primitive interactions in early game, and more conflict and war, to give way to complex alliances and negotiations as your society progresses. For Research, you’ll now be encouraged to explore new lands and develop the local environment. Doing so will unlock boosts that advance the speed topics are researched.
Finally (for now, at least), there are tweaks coming to accessibility and multiplayer. While the game is designed for long-time Civ fans, a fresh tutorial system is promised that will ease new players slowly into the myriad aspects of a campaign. For multiplayer, a new mode is coming based around scenarios. This as-yet unnamed mode can be played both cooperatively and competitively, and is designed to be “easily completed in a single session.”
Expect to hear a lot more about Civilization VI soon. The game is scheduled for release on October 21st. Previous titles have also come to OS X and Linux, but as of now it’s only confirmed for PC. We’re likely to learn about new features, tweaks and release plans for additional platforms over the coming weeks months leading up to the launch.
Correction: This article has been modified since publishing to better explain the way unit combination will work in Civilization VI. It previously stated that having more that one unit per tile was new to the series. While unit combination is a new feature addition to the Civilization series, prior to Civilization V, multiple units could be stacked on a single tile. The two features are very different, but the original statement was nonetheless incorrect, and we apologize for the error.
Nintendo’s new mobile games will be free-to-play
Nintendo’s upcoming smartphone renditions of popular franchises Fire Emblem and Animal Crossing will be free to play, according to DeNA’s Chief Executive Isao Moriyasu.
The actual terminology Moriyasu used is “free-to-start,” meaning you won’t have to pay anything to get started with either game, but they will of course be monetized. Given Nintendo’s efforts in the handheld realm and the increasing number of mobile apps arising from the partnership between Nintendo and mobile company DeNA, this could very well be the norm going forward.
Unfortunately no additional details were given surrounding how the apps will utilize the free-to-play model. Animal Crossing on its own uses “bells” as a currency for players to purchase items, pay off their in-game homes and more, so it’s very possible there could be a similar model in the mobile app. Fire Emblem is a strategy role-playing game notorious for featuring game modes where members of your party can succumb to permadeath, but perhaps a freemium model could offer options to bring them back for a fee.
This is an unsurprising move given the company’s recent track record of releasing games like Pokemon Shuffle and Pokemon Rumble World as freemium options, both available via 3DS/2DS and mobile titles. Both rely on “energy” to continue playing if you run out of the allotted currency. Games like Nintendo Badge Arcade offer free plays each day and dangle additional badges to collect in the faces of those unwilling to pay further to explore, and Rusty’s Real Deal Baseball gives players the option to haggle to purchase in-game minigames.
It’s not clear how Nintendo will handle these high-profile franchises just yet, but free-to-play will almost certainly get more consumers invested than premium pricing. We’ll have to wait and see what happens.
Source: WSJ
Nintendo 2DS drops to $80 on May 20th
The 2DS is getting yet another price cut on May 20th. Less than a year after Nintendo brought it down to $100, from $130 originally, the company revealed today that its handheld console will now cost $80. That puts the 2DS in impulse-buy territory, so long as you’re willing to live without the three-dimensional effect found on the flagship 3DS. It does come with a digital copy of Mario Kart 7, though, which is about a $20 value on its own.
Yesterday, Nintendo also announced the release date for Pokémon Sun and Moon, in case you’re looking for a reason to spend $80 on the 2DS. Although those games won’t be available until November 18th, there are plenty others coming out over the next few weeks, including Kirby: Planet Robobot and the long-awaited Mighty No. 9.
Source: Nintendo (Twitter)
‘Rock Band VR’ will only let you shred guitar
Abandon all hope, ye Rock Banders who live to bang on the drums, lovingly ‘pluck’ that bass or croon like you’re America’s next top someone — for now, at least. According to UploadVR, developer Harmonix has confirmed that its upcoming Rock Band VR for Oculus Rift will only be playable with the guitar. Harmonix had hinted as much this past March when we attended a Rift preview event, saying that support for those three other instruments would likely be left off the table. But it seems like the effort to put the “band” back together in VR was just too challenging for the developer’s first Rift effort. Instead, Harmonix has decided to perfect the immersive experience using only the guitar, which requires a clip-on Oculus Touch controller to track its placement in the virtual space.
Though the Rift’s now out in the wild for anyone with deep pockets and a compatible PC, there’s no word on when Rock Band VR will be released. But, considering how integral Touch is to the experience, you can bank on seeing it launch sometime in the second half of this year when Oculus brings that controller to market. Only then will you get the chance to shred in VR.
Source: UploadVR
Play ‘Hitman Go’ on Gear VR and Oculus Rift tomorrow
Hitman Go is a smart reimagining of a languishing franchise that lit up mobile devices when it first launched in 2014. It took the painstaking stealth assassinations of the original Hitman series and transformed them into a minimalistic board game. Now it’s headed to VR by way of the Gear VR and Oculus Rift tomorrow, May 12th.
If you’re picking up the Gear VR version you’ll pay $7.99 and if you own an Oculus Rift you’ll pay $9.99 for the updated and expanded Hitman Go, which developer Square Enix advises will feature 90 FPS and “seamless head tracking.”
The VR version will include 91 different levels ranging from classics taken from Hitman: Blood Money and Hitman: Silent Assassin. If you’ve already played through those titles during their initial release, it’s worth going through them again for the new VR perspective as well as their new aesthetic, done up in crisp Hitman Go style.
Source: The Verge
Oculus highlights over a million Gear VR users with new content
While full-fledged VR headsets like the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive have gotten a lot of press lately, it bears remembering that Samsung’s Gear VR has been around for a lot longer. And, due to its lower price and the fact that it only requires a phone, means it’s also a whole lot more accessible. Which could explain why almost six months after the consumer Gear VR launched, Oculus revealed today that over one million people used Gear VR in the past month alone. The Facebook-owned entity took this milestone opportunity to not only introduce a slew of new video content, but also to give us an update on how mobile VR is progressing.
“Oculus’ mission is to help people experience anything, anywhere,” says Max Cohen, Oculus’ head of mobile to a roomful of journalists this Tuesday. There’s the high-end experience of the Rift, of course, but there’s also the portable easy-to-use version of the Gear VR. “The secret [with VR] is it can’t just be slightly better than other experiences that you’ve had,” says Cohen. “It has to be even better.”
Part of the reason why the million number mark is so exciting, then, is because it’ll hopefully push developers to create even more content for the platform. Cohen admits that it’s sometimes a daunting task trying to get developers to spend time making VR content. “They tell us, ‘Give us a call when you’ve a hit a million users’.” Well, now they have. Plus, Cohen says, the average time that users spend on the Gear VR is around 25 minutes a day. “They’re highly engaged with the product,” he says.
Aside from the number of users, Oculus is also working on increasing app discovery. There’s over 250 apps for Gear VR right now, but finding new content can be a problem, especially for newcomers. That’s why Oculus is rolling out a revamped Oculus Home design next month, which will hopefully make it that much easier to find recently downloaded content. You’ll also see a “What’s New” section starting this week plus an updated library that offers deep links directly into the apps. There’ll also be a social element so you can see what your friends are watching or doing.
In conjunction with the announcement, Oculus wanted to highlight several new VR experiences. They include 6×9 (available now), a Guardian-produced film that lets you feel how it’s like to be in solitary confinement; Notes on Blindness: Into the Darkness (available late June), which puts you in the shoes of someone who’s slowly going blind; Tactera (available late May), a real-time strategy game with holographic pieces; and lastly Nomads, which lets you explore how it’s like to be in different nomadic tribes such as the Maasai in Kenya, the yak herders in Mongolia and the sea gypsies of Borneo. Nomads, which debuts today, was produced by Felix & Paul Studios, which has done other Oculus content such as Jurassic World and Wild.
Additionally, Oculus has been working on a partnership with Discovery to develop a new Deadliest Catch VR experience that’ll put you on the rough seas as a virtual crew member. It’ll launch next week on May 17th. There’ll also be an experience called First Life, which is narrated by renown naturalist David Attenborough. It promises to bring you back 500 million years in the past and give you a first-hand look at prehistoric sea creatures.
If it seems like there’s an unusual number of video experiences on this list, that’s no coincidence. Seven of the top 10 most used apps on Gear VR are video-related. Eugene Wei, head of video at Oculus, says that over 2 million hours of video are consumed on the mobile headset as of last check. That includes the usual 2D movie experiences that you can watch in a virtual cinema (either via Oculus Video or a Netflix VR app) or live 180-degree streams of events like the Kentucky Derby. “But when most people talk about video and VR, they think 360-degree video,” he says. “It’s continuing to gain momentum.”
But the problem with 360-degree content is that there’s a really high barrier to entry. Creating VR video is not the same as regular video; there’s still a lot that filmmakers have to figure out. It’s why Facebook released the blueprints for the Surround 360 camera. Not because they want to be in the 360 camera business, but because they want more people to create content. “Our goal is to get this camera into the hands of as many creators as possible,” says Wei, adding that the team has also worked to integrate consumer-level cameras like the Gear 360 and the Ricoh Theta S with the ability to upload directly to the Facebook Newsfeed.
There’s also the issue with just how much bandwidth 360-degree video takes up. To get around that, Facebook developed a technology called Dynamic Streaming, which increases the quality of the video you can see but degrades the video that’s off-screen. The improved display resolution of the recent Samsung phones is also integral to the Gear VR experience. “[1440p OLED screens] might not matter on a traditional phone,” says Wei. “But when it comes to VR, it really makes a difference in the quality of the experience.”
Storytelling in VR is also pretty different from traditional mediums. For example, take the opening credits of Game of Thrones that was created in 360-degree video. If you watched it on your phone or on your computer, it retains that same camera swooping motion you’d see on TV. But put that same experience on a headset and it starts to feel a little strange. That’s why Oculus is now working on creating a special VR headset experience of the Game of Thrones title sequence that would put you in the middle of King’s Landing where you’ll be able to see the buildings sprouting up around you. “It’s an example of the visual grammar that people have to learn,” Wei says. “We have to have creative collaboration with creators to help them understand [these new] design constraints.”
Right now, most VR video content is still on the short side; maybe a few minutes at most per clip. That’s mostly because it’s just really cost-prohibitive to create a two-hour 360-degree movie. But Cohen and Wei say there have been some legitimate interest from filmmakers on how to do exactly that. “I’ve heard of a few film directors who want to tackle that,” says Wei. “I’m excited to see what happens.”
Wei also wanted to emphasize that 360-degree content isn’t unique to just video. He says that in the coming weeks, Facebook will announce support for 360-degree photos as well. You can either shoot and upload panoramic photo spheres with your phone, or use one of the aforementioned specialized cameras.
“There’s this underlying belief that a mobile platform is fundamentally unserious,” says E McNeill, the creator of Tactera and Darknet, both of which are video games designed for the Gear VR. “I think that’s a mistake […] The Gear VR really punches above its weight. Once you have the headset on, you’re not squinting at a small screen. It’s VR.” Plus, Cohen says, a lot more games are making the jump from Gear VR to the Rift and vice versa, thus adding legitimacy to the platform. Dragon Front, for example, is a game that will launch concurrently on both the Rift and the Gear VR.
“Think about the kids learning five, ten, fifteen years fro now,” says Cohen in regards to the Nomads VR experience. “They’re not going to be using text books, when they can experience first hand what these people went through. It really creates this kind of emotional connection.”
“We want to get mobile VR in the hands of as many people as possible,” says Cohen. “We think we can actually change people’s lives.” It’s an admittedly grandiose statement. But it seems that at least a million users are intrigued enough to give it a go.
‘Titanfall 2’ lands this autumn
Slowly but surely, game publishers and developers are starting to reveal their hands ahead of E3 next month. Electronic Arts is no different, and by way of its quarterly earnings report (PDF) the publisher has revealed that the now-multiplatform Titanfall 2 will debut this fall. With the recent news that Mass Effect: Andromeda is slipping into next year, that means the sequel to developer Respawn’s mech-heavy shooter will sit alongside Battlefield 1 from Dice in autumn.
A note at the bottom of Powerpoint slide eight says that the release schedule only includes publicly announced games. So, chances are high that there will be a few surprises come June during the game industry’s equivalent of Paris Fashion Week.
Source: Electronic Arts (PDF)
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