EL33TONLINE: News tag archive: disneyinteractivestudios
It’s just been confirmed that the developer behind racing games Pure and Split/Second, Black Rock Studio, is set to close its doors, following staff reductions at owner Disney Interactive Studios earlier this year.
The news arrives as a result of Black Rock Studio’s next game failing to get the green light for production. An official statement from Disney read:
The burning question on my mind when I cracked open the box was do we really need a LEGO game about Pirates to tide us over?
I am pleased to say that the answer to that question is a resounding yes! With LEGO games the building blocks to a successful title have always been about offering a high quality adventure for gamers of all ages and LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean not only keeps up with this creed with its polished and inimitable rendition of our favourite pirates, but in some ways actually manages to even raise the bar for all future LEGO games!
Continue reading El33tonline’s review of LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean.
Disney Interactive Studios recently announced that you’ll soon be able to slip into the skins of your favourite Disney and Pixar characters in an upcoming multiplayer action adventure game known as Disney Universe.
According to a number of reports doing the rounds, Disney Interactive Studios has begun a company restructuring process and will aim to realign its efforts in the videogame publishing arena by focussing on digital distribution and online games, rather than packaged goods games for retail.
“As part of setting a strategic direction for future success in the digital media space,” read a statement to Variety, “the Disney Interactive Media Group today began a restructuring process.”
This new direction obviously puts major questions over the future of Disney’s current game studios, including Junction Point (Disney Epic Mickey) and Black Rock (Split/Second), and it seems as though some of those questions have already been answered with reports of layoffs across the company.
Disney Epic Mickey had a lot of expectation and promise riding with it before release, as well as a lot of talent and financial support what with game industry luminary Warren Spector heading up the title’s creative vision, and the backing of a multibillion dollar in the Disney Company.
As an adventure game that takes players across several different exotic locations (all based on Disney franchises and areas of the Disney Land/World theme parks) and allows you to meet a vast array of characters from Disney cartoons gone by, Disney Epic Mickey is an extremely rich title, filled with history, detail, care and vibrance.
As an action platform game, however, Disney Epic Mickey has a good amount of issues that make the richness of the title a little difficult to access, and with a fairly serious case of schizophrenia it becomes less and less of a value proposition.
Give it a chance to shine, though, and the game will reward you with its wonderful characters, world, atmosphere and story, and at the very least live up to its promise in bursts, glimmers and glimpses. Despite its problems, Disney Epic Mickey provides one of the most memorable experiences in recent memory, with an addictive quality largely missing from Wii (and even blockbuster) games today.
Continue reading El33tonline’s review of Disney Epic Mickey.
Disney Interactive Studios has announced that internal game development studio, Propaganda Games, has been closed following the developer’s work on Tron: Evolution – The Video Game.
Disney Interactive Studios has released an explosive launch trailer to celebrate the release of Split/Second for the PSP this week.
Sumo Digital were in charge of development duties for the PSP instalment, and added four new Challenge modes that promise to test drivers in different ways. According to Disney, “each mode was designed with some key thoughts in mind – (1) blow things up; (2) race really fast; (3)use the environment to your advantage; (4) combine 1 to 3 while trying to get the highest score!”
Junction Point and Disney Interactive Studios’s action adventure game for the Wii, Disney Epic Mickey, isn’t just about setting players loose in a colourful wonderland filled with forgotten characters and amazing attractions.
The game is also about allowing players to make their way through the adventure via methods of their choosing and through decisions of their own, rather than progressing through a linear series of events before arriving at the same ending in the same way as everybody else.
In this latest developer diary for Disney Epic Mickey, Warren Spector and other team members working on the title speak a little about this freedom to choose how you play the game, and the effects of those decisions on the story:
Disney Epic Mickey from Junction Point Studios and Disney Interactive Studios is looking magical indeed, and contains the kind of quality that you would expect from the highest class of Nintendo titles – a grand compliment, I’m sure.
A couple of newly released gameplay videos for Disney Epic Mickey do nothing to shiver the timbers of that assertion, and by the end of November when the game becomes available, Wii owners (and Wii naysayers) should pay careful attention to the Mickey-starring action platformer.
Great balls of fire! Is it true?! Why yes, it is!
Disney Interactive Studios has finally deemed it necessary to announce the release date for Junction Point’s action adventure game starring Mickey Mouse, Disney Epic Mickey!
Acclaim Games (not to be confused with Acclaim Entertainment) has been shut down after four years in business bringing online games developed in Asia to Western markets.
Text on the publisher’s official website reads:
“We regret to inform you that all Acclaim games will no longer be in service effective August 26, 2010,” going to on assure players in the possession of any unused Acclaim Coins (the company’s virtual currency across its range of titles) can be reimbursed by emailing a dedicated address (found on the site).
Game industry veteran Warren Spector may be working on a Wii-exclusive adventure title based on Disney’s epic catalogue of properties in Disney Epic Mickey, but by the sounds of it, he’s really keen to tackle development of a game for Nintendo’s upcoming handheld stereoscopic 3D console, the 3DS.
In a series of blog posts, Spector gave his perspective on the recently concluded E3 2010 event, talking a little (and a lot) about his experiences and activities during the show, but it wasn’t until part four of his E3 round-up that he got to the topic of Nintendo’s 3DS… and how utterly awesome he thinks the console is going to be.
Disney Interactive and Junction Point’s action adventure title starring Mickey Mouse was unveiled to the public for the first time during Nintendo’s E3 2010 press conference, where the unique ‘drawing’ and ‘erasing’ gameplay mechanic was demonstrated to the audience.
While in the world of Disney Epic Mickey, players will be able to use the power of ‘paint’ to draw objects and items into the world to help them proceed, solve puzzles and gain the trust of the world’s inhabitants. Players can also use paint ‘thinner’ to erase objects from the world at will, even being able to erase walls, floors and ceilings to ease progress.
How you use these abilities will determine how the world and its characters react to you, which will in turn affect the way the story plays out.
You can see all of this in action in a couple gameplay videos below, and hear project head Warren Spector talk about Disney Epic Mickey:
Sony of Europe has posted an interesting interview with Jason Reid, the producer of Split/Second on their blog, discussing Disney Interactive Studio’s upcoming action racing game, Split/Second.
In the interview Reid discusses the six game modes, framerate as well as environments and Power Plays. He also reveals that developer Black Rock Studios took quite a bit of inspiration from Hollywood and Jerry Bruckheimer to create Split/Second.
A demo for Disney Interactive Studio’s action racing game, Split/Second, will be arriving on the US PlayStation Store today.
The demo is set in the Airport location and the track features “some incredible moments that YOU can trigger – including a navigational radar dish that explodes off its base and a tram that slams into a parking structure creating some real shock waves on the track.”
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