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Disney is putting an end to their Disney Infinity toy-game line and discontinuing their “self-published console games business,” the company said today. After June, Infinity will stop getting new updates.
Disney is also shutting down Avalanche Software, the Utah-based studio responsible for Infinity. As a result, around 300 people will lose their jobs.
Along with cancellation of “Infinity,” Disney is closing Avalanche studio in Utah. Close to 300 jobs will be cut.
“This was a difficult decision that we did not take lightly given the quality of Disney Infinity and its many passionate fans,” Disney said in a statement.
There will be two new Disney Infinity releases in May and June before the series ends for good: one based on Alice Through The Looking Glass, and a second from Finding Dory.
“Our goal for Disney Infinity was to bring the best of Disney storytelling to life in homes around the world, and with your support we accomplished that,” GM John Blackburn wrote on their blog. “We hope you had as much fun playing the game as we had making it.”
This news comes just two months after Disney announced that there will be no new edition of Infinity this year, as there had been since the series launched in 2013.
Disney says they plan to continue licensing their properties to other video game publishers but will no longer make their own console games.
On a call with investors this afternoon, Disney boss Bob Iger said that “the risk had caught up with” his company and that they were pleased with the success of the first Disney Infinity, but sales went downhill after that. “[The video game] business is a changing business,” Iger said of the company’s pivot out of making games. “We did not have enough confidence in the business in terms of it being stable enough.”
New details have been made public for Rainbow Six Siege’s next bit of free content, Operation Dust Line.
Already known was that it was going to bring the new ‘Border’ map (described as being the most open and destructible map yet) and two new operators that you could play as; Valkyrie with her sticky cameras that anyone on the team can access, and Blackbeard with his rifle-mounted shield to protect from small arms fire.
The update will also come with the ability to customise your operators between rounds to help teams be a bit more reactive to opposition instead of being stuck with a disadvantage all session; and also the ability to disable the placement of gadgets during a match enabling players to get down to just shooting at each other instead of using traps. There will also be a post match screen to show the winning team and highlight the most valuable player in a match.
Of course there’ll be tweaks to existing content too, with side protection being added to Montagne’s shield and Tachanka’s machine gun being made easier to place among other changes.
The new map will release for all players free on May 11th, which is also when Season Pass owners will get instant access to both new characters. Everyone else will have to wait a week for them to unlock on the 18th, and then will have to purchase them through in-game currency Renown or the microtransaction-based R6 Credits.
One of the more… unusual measures of a game’s success has to be how often the game is searched for slightly more adult purposes than just video games. One such game that could be called a success based on that is Overwatch, which is currently running its open beta.
VentureBeat have discovered that since the beta went live, the search terms to do with Overwatch have soared by 817 percent on adult video site Pornhub. Unsurprisingly Tracer is the most popularly searched for character, especially given the controversy over her victory pose a few weeks back.
In case you’re wondering how on earth there can be videos of game characters, well let’s just say character modellers and Valve’s free tool the Source Film Maker have an awful lot to answer for. The viewing figures and uploader numbers all suggest that this is a sort of global thing as well with users being registered from all over Asia, Europe and South America among other places.
Of course, adult works of fictional characters are nothing new – the Internet is for porn after all. The numbers though are fairly impressive.
Outside of this though, Overwatch has had a pretty successful open beta so far with a lot of people playing it and getting hooked. Heck, even as I write my brother is on the other side of the room playing Overwatch on the Playstation 4. He’s pretty good with Reinhardt and his shield.
After a leak earlier this morning, EA has officially confirmed the next Battlefield game, titled Battlefield 1.
The game will be set in World War 1 and will release on October 21 for Playstation 4, Xbox One and PC (via Origin).
As per usual with EA games, there are a mass of pre-order bonuses. The Early Enlister Deluxe Edition will be available for all playforms on October 18 for $79.99. If you pick it up, you’ll be able to play three days early. You’ll also get extra vehicles and emblems including the Lawrence of Arabia Pack, Red Baron Pack and new visual appearance for three vehicles- the Frontline Camouflage train, the Dazzle Camouflage Dreadnought and the Night Raid Airship.
Battlefield 1 will contain dogfighting in biplanes and airships with external manned guns, and all the World War 1 “goodies” you’d expect. Trench warfare French tanks, gas masks and mustard gas were all shown off in the trailer. Melee combat will also have a larger focus with rapiers, trench shovels and spiked batons all available as melee weapons.
Check out EA’s blog post for more info on Battlefield 1.
Gearbox Software’s new shooter Battleborn is out today, just in case you’ve been living under a rock. While the game does have a single player campaign, it also has an extensive multiplayer PvP component. As with many shooters, its going to take us some time to see how the servers hold up, how the progression system works in the long term, and just how fun the game is for extended periods of time. So, in case you were wondering where the final score is, don’t worry. We’ll be updating our review in progress over the coming days with more impressions and videos. But for now, here’s a clip from Digmbot’s launch day stream to tide you over. And don’t forget to jump down past the video when you get done for some more impressions of this new IP.
Battleborn is a hard game to define. Like Overwatch, it’s a hero shooter. Characters have unique weapons and abilities, and you level up throughout the match. However, it also shares some MOBA DNA. As you level up, you choose augments to your basic abilities. You might want to increase the AOE damage of the archer Thorn’s blight pool for example. Or, you may choose to have her gain increased movement speed whenever she touches her own blight. The choice is yours, and it allows you to customize your Battleborn to your chosen playstyle or respond to the in game situation by specializing to deal with certain opponents.
The game does have a single player campaign, which can be played solo, with friends or in public groups. Only a handful of missions are available at launch, with the rest coming out later on. With 25 characters to unlock via mission completion, challenges and more, theres no shortage of content. The game also comes with three modes. Incursion sees you escorting your minions down a lane and building gun turrets, accelerator turrets and more as you try to push into the enemy base and destroy their sentry robots. Meltdown on the other hand tasks you with driving minions into giant furnaces to score points. And Capture, perhaps the dullest of the modes, is a standard capture and hold three points affair.
What sets Battleborn apart is the sense of humor and the way that experience is handled in match. The furnaces in Meltdown think they are gods. As minions are engulfed, they will scream out things like “By fire be reborn aaaas…..HUBCAPS!” Characters have tons of witty one liners. And even the sentry bots that guard the enemy base have their own personalities- I’ll never forget the first time one killed me and then flipped me off during the death cam replay.
Then there’s the way the game handles levelling and experience. In most shooters or MOBAs, you get experience from kills or from taking down significant objectives. While this still holds true in Battleborn you also have other options available. If you want to spend shards (the game’s currency earned from kills as well as object on the map) to build and level up defensive and offensive turrets, the game will reward you with XP. This means that a support focused character can play the map and continue to level up. In addition, gear is taken into battle in the form of loadouts. There is no item shop. Instead, you must spend shards to activate your gear. The better the gear, the more shards it costs to activate. And, showing it’s Borderlands DNA, the most epic of loot in Battleborn often comes with some significant disadvantages to offset the insane buffs it can provide. All this means that the game allows players to determine how they level up, when they activate gear (if at all) to obtain power spikes, and keeps the action flowing at a pace that never feels frustrating. Getting slaughtered in straight up fights? Sit back, support the team by building healing turrets and get some levels. Kicking ass and taking names? Spend those sweet shards to up your crit chance as you activate that sweet pair of gloves you unlocked in a loot pack after that last campaign mission.
As you can probably tell, theres a lot of interesting ideas in Battleborn. The characters are memorable, the levels are well laid out and the gameplay loop is satisfying and allows you to be flexible in your playstyle. We’ll be bringing you more over the coming days, so stay tuned!
Want the system specs for Battleborn? Click HERE for PredictedCyborg’s preview of what you need to run it.
Still need more gameplay? Check out Lone and Digm playing the open beta HERE.
