Welcome to the Game Replay, the thrice-weekly look back at the wider world of gaming by the staff of MacNN. In today's edition, Disney gives up on Disney Infinity and closes an internal studio, Paradox Interactive sees record day-one revenue from Stellaris at launch, the Five Nights at Freddy's franchise may arrive on consoles, and EA's financial results reveals some information about major game launches.
Disney Infinity ceases production, Avalanche Software shuttered
Disney is winding down its
Disney Infinity franchise, announcing the game will
cease production. As part of this, the media company is also shuttering Avalanche Software, an internal studio that worked on the game, with the closure meaning close to 300 people will lose their jobs with the company.
Chairman of consumer products and interactive media Jimmy Pitaro explained in a statement that Disney was switching its gaming strategy "exclusively to a licensing model,"
reports Polygon. "This was a difficult decision that we did not take lightly given the quality of Disney Infinity and its many passionate fans."
In an earnings call, Disney CEO Bob Iger explains "We thought we had a really good opportunity to launch our own product in that space; the console space but also the toys to life space. In fact, we did quite well with the first iteration and did OK with the second, but that business is a changing business and we did not have enough confidence in the business in terms of being stable enough to stay in it." Iger goes on to explain Disney is better off "managing the risk of that business by licensing instead of publishing," noting the risk of creating the product line "finally caught up with us."
In early March, Disney made the decision to pause its
annual update schedule in favor of expanding the existing third generation of the game, complete with assurances that it would be releasing more playsets and content updates throughout the year to coincide with major Disney events. A blog post advises that there will be only two more releases, including three characters from Alice Through the Looking Glass this month, and the Finding Dory Play Set in June. Later in March, Disney declared it would no longer support the game for the
Apple TV, in order to focus on "the traditional gaming platforms."
Five Nights at Freddy's could be ported to consoles
Popular horror game series
Five Nights at Freddy's may be heading to mainstream consoles in the future, according to the franchise's creator Scott Cawthon. The developer is said to be in
discussions with "a few companies" over porting the game to consoles, replying to a query about the possibility on Steam by telling fans "Actually, yes! It will happen."
Gamespot reports Cawthon's comments seem to suggest it will be for remakes of the original four
Five Nights titles. The fifth game, an RPG based on the property, was released and then
recalled due to a considerable number of bugs and other issues, before being
rereleased as a free game.
Potential developers or publishers for porting the games over were not suggested by Cawthon, nor when to expect them to be released, but consoles won't be the only place the
Freddy's series will be arriving in the future. In April last year, reports circulated that the
movie rights to the franchise were picked up by Warner Bros., with major film industry names including David Katzenberg, Roy Lee, and Seth Grahame-Smith apparently linked to the effort.
Stellaris beats Paradox Interactive's day one revenue record
Stellaris, a space-based strategy game from Paradox Interactive, has become the publisher's highest revenue earner for the first day of sales. The game, for PC and Mac, shifted over 200,000 units within the opening 24 hours of sale, bringing it close to the unit sales record of 250,000 by stablemate
Cities: Skylines, but the higher price allowed it to bring in more revenue to the publisher.
The game pits players against a procedurally-driven universe, with galaxies containing thousands of planets and alien races to encounter as they attempt to conquer territory. The "Grand Strategy" game requires players to send ships and crew off to scan new planets for resources and for other races, forging alliances with diplomacy or starting wars with rivals.
"It is a type of game we have never attempted to do before, and we are immensely satisfied to see this leap of faith work out well, especially with all the positive response we are getting from the players," advised game director Henrik Fahraeus
to Eurogamer. "We are listening very keenly to all the feedback we are getting and look forward to many years of continued expansions and improvements to the game."
EA provides investors with details about Star Wars Battlefront follow-up, Titanfall 2
An investor call has revealed publisher Electronic Arts' plans for two major first person shooter franchises. The publisher is planning to launch a follow-up to
Star Wars Battlefront next year, while the sequel for
Titanfall will be arriving later this year.
According to information picked up
by Polygon,
Titanfall 2 is slated to launch sometime in the fiscal third quarter, putting it sometime between October and December this year, if developer Respawn Entertainment keeps to its schedule. EA CEO Andrew Wilson suggested that the similar release timeframe to Battlefield 1 won't cause sales problems, as the FPS genre is "a giant category in our industry.
During the call, it was
announced there would be a sequel to
Star Wars Battlefront shipping sometime in 2017, though declined to say exactly when. As the game doesn't appear in the 2017 fiscal year announced games list, it is likely the game will ship sometime after April. EA plans to have "one Star Wars title a year for the next three to four years," though these other games will not necessarily be FPS titles.
Other games brought up in the results
documentation include Mirror's Edge Catalyst, Mass Effect Andromeda, and a number of EA Sports titles.
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