Lit A/V The Force Awakens and the EU [TAGGED spoilers.]

Only news of the shutdown so far. Got my info from IO9.

LA wasn't a profitable part of the investment, so their demise was long coming anyway. More than likely Disney will make games in house or sell it for someone else to make.

 

Whoever makes the games: please revive the X-Wing/Tie Fighter franchise, and give us TFU III. kthanksbye

 

Another one bites the dust........

 

I wonder if 1313 will be picked up, or if it's dead and buried? Was looking forward to that one. Then again, 1313 wasn't made in house, was it? What games did Lucasarts actually develop?

 

Yeah, Lucasarts was long past it's prime, IMO. I obviously feel sad for those affected by layoffs. But, I really do think that Disney's approach to cleaning house and refreshing things will ultimately lead to a rebirth for Star Wars.

The one exception to this would be losing Dark Horse. I truly hope that Disney allows them to keep the license, given their fantastic track record for creating popular series.

***EDIT***

This articles seems to think that 1313 was canceled as well: http://kotaku.com/disney-shuts-down-lucasarts-468473749

--Adm. Nick

 

Yeah, LA have been franchising most stuff out in recent years, with the in-house stuff having been the really crap TCW tie-ins that nobody even remembers.

Admittedly, I think TFU was in-house, with just the ports outsourced to Krome if I recall correctly? But even TFU wasn't a huge success else they'd not have cancelled TFU3.

Frankly, I always used to feel LA's success came through their innovations back in the 90s, as they often were the first to do stuff and sold off the engines to other developers (unsure if they did that with the TFU physics engine?). But nowadays there's so many other developers who are just as skilled that LA's main selling point just doesn't exist anymore.

Kinda hope Disney outsource a new Monkey Quest game now though, as LA always wanted to keep their IPs in-house, so maybe we'll finally see some of their own creations revisited by another developer now.

 

The one piece of detritus I hope they cut is Star Wars: The Battle of Hoth, the nextgen video game extravaganza that I'm sure someone at LucasArts had wanted to do for years.

 

Oh god, how many times have we flown that snowspeeder?

 

Or, in some games, gotten out of other vehicles to use snowspeeders against walkers?

I still hope that Disney picks one lucky inmate from the local psych ward to play Max in Disneyland. RIP, SCUMM.

 

Great Scott, that was a long time coming. Good riddance.

On the other hand, I've always assigned the spirit of 90s Lucasarts to Telltale Games, so the legend lives on.

 

What I really wanted was a return to the 90s glory days. It's really disappointing to see a publisher with such a great legacy essentially shut down. But since it seems it was damn near impossible to get LA working again, this is the next best thing. Hopefully they'll start licensing some good stuff finally instead of just refusing to make games.

 

They also gave us the 90's. You can't chastise people for being somewhat bummed

 

I can smell Marvel and I don't care what Randy says. Dark Horse is not part of Disney, Marvel is and if I were Disney, keep the story in house and recoup the $4.05 billion. Lucasanimation, Lucasarts, ILM, you watch Dark Horse is next by next year. Disney is now the true master now .

 

I think it's disappointing they can't manage to do anything with the remnants of LA. From a business standpoint I can understand Disney dropping it. But two things seem off here:

1) A lot of gamers, not just Star Wars fans, know of LucasArts. It's got history. The name alone is worth something.
2) This was announced within a month of the TCW/Detours cancellation.

Disney must have known in advance that it would be cutting ties with these projects/companies. And yet they were the prime attractions at the conventions last year. So most of LFL (save maybe Lucas) weren't aware. Heck, Filoni was even bragging about the sunny future of TCW last winter.


So this all makes me very suspicious. I'm not surprised Disney shut down LA, but I'm surprised at how they did it and when they did it. Like TCW, it must have been planned well in advance before those in the company knew.

I'm pretty much ready to kiss Dark Horse's franchise goodbye at this point.

 

Jello, I wouldn't put much effort in trying to get Vong33 to not be a conspiracy theorist and/or logically consistent. It doesn't work.

 

LA getting demolished is for the best. It has been well over a decade since they released anything that was worth someone's time or money.

 

Just sayin'.

 

Someone ask Mr. Rep if they're gonna outsource Battlefront III too.

 

As usual, the AV Club sums up my feelings on this better than I could myself:

Ooh, and Raven just released the source code for Jedi Outcast/Academy. We could be seeing some awesome mods down the line.