1070°

Disney Shuts Down LucasArts, Cancels Star Wars 1313 And Star Wars: First Assault

Staff were involved of the shutdown this morning, according to a reliable Kotaku source. Some 150 people were laid off, and both of the studio's current projects--Star Wars: First Assault and Star Wars 1313--were cancelled.

Black-Rock-Shooter4031d ago

This is very sad news...
I was hoping Disney where going to expand the star wars series.

dedicatedtogamers4031d ago

This comes as no surprise. Lucasarts hasn't been making good games since...oh, wow. I can't remember the last good game they made. It has been a loooong while.

To be fair, they may be closing the studio to make room for something better. Star Wars licensed games sell well enough. Disney may have something else in mind.

Black-Rock-Shooter4031d ago (Edited 4031d ago )

Does not change the fact that they had to cancel those games could have continued them somewhere else.

EDIT: Also I hope those people that have lost there jobs find new work.

thechosenone4031d ago (Edited 4031d ago )

With all the positive press this title has already gotten I'm sure one of the big publishers won't hesitate in snatching this up. Oh how I wish Sony would buy it though.

Lucas Rep Says Star Wars 1313 Might Be Saved Through Licensing

https://www.gameinformer.co...
"It is worth noting that we are looking for proven external partners who can help us provide video games to our fans. We still believe in the video game industry, we still will provide Star Wars games, we're just looking at different models rather than internal production... They're evaluating everything. There's always a possibility that it [Star Wars 1313] can still come out via licensing."

darthv724031d ago

a delayed april fools joke or is this for real?

When it comes to anything right around the 1st of April i can never tell. Even though its the 3rd, this could be making the rounds from Monday and everyone else is passing it along thinking its new.

If it IS real...it is real sad.

KwietStorm_BLM4031d ago

Disney has endless funds. They didn't have to kill the studio so quickly after the purchase. Screw them.

That-Guy4031d ago

It's Disney. What did you expect? They could at least finish 1313 though.

dedicatedtogamers4031d ago

Need I remind anyone that Lucasart's last game was Star Wars Kinect? A title that was shown off three years ago at Microsoft's E3 and ended up like...welll...Star Wars Kinect. Before that was the incredibly mediocre Force Unleashed 2, and before that was the okay but overhyped Force Unleashed. Am I missing something here? The talent left LucasArts a long time ago.

ziggurcat4031d ago

"I can't remember the last good game they made. It has been a loooong while."

the indiana jones point-and-click adventure games were pretty great.

Oh_Yeah4031d ago (Edited 4031d ago )

Star wars kinect was bad, the Force Unleashed could have been better, kotor has way dated mechanics...Honestly I don't think I've ever played a GREAT Star Wars game.. I'd rather just play Mass Effect because it's closer to the actual Star Wars feel than anyone has got with an actual Star Wars game.

Old McGroin4031d ago

@ Oh_Yeah

"Star wars kinect was bad, the Force Unleashed could have been better, kotor has way dated mechanics...Honestly I don't think I've ever played a GREAT Star Wars game"

Battlefront 2. It's available on Steam and still pretty popular online, you should check it out.

Pintheshadows4030d ago (Edited 4030d ago )

Republic Commando, Empire at War, X-Wing vs Tie Fighter, Lego Star Wars, The entire Jedi Knight series. These are all excellent Star Wars games.

More importantly though, we'll never see a sequel to The Grim Fandango now and that makes my soul die a little.

darthv724030d ago

were the Rogue squadron series and Lego SW games.

Force unleashed isnt all that bad but it could have been so much more than it was.

I was really looking forward to 1313 but if disney is making new movies then there is a chance the games will be based off those instead.

Perhaps some of the lucas talent will find homes with another top notch developer like naughty dog or others.

Reibooi4030d ago (Edited 4030d ago )

This kinda annoys me. As mentioned it has been awhile since LucasArts made a really good game but I think I know why it bothers me.

Firstly is the legacy of the studio. I mean they may be a shadow of what they used to be now but they used to be one of the best studios in the industry making some of the most intelligent and funny games ever.

Second Star Wars 1313 looked great and I'm not just talking about visually. While it did look stunning it also looked like they were taking inspiration from the right places and had it come out as intended it may have been the game that put them back in a much more positive light. This just could be me hoping for something more then what was happening but that kinda goes back to what I mentioned above. It's a shame. I wonder if anything similar to the games cancelled will be made via the new method Disney seems set on.

@Pintheshadows
We were likley never going to see another Grim Fandango. In fact I would bet it's more likely to see one now. Tim Schaffer likes to own the rights to his games. Hence why he bought the rights to Brutal Legend back. Now that the Studio won't be making games it's Possible Double Fine will be able to buy the rights to some of the older LucasArts stuff like Grim Fandango because Disney likely cares only of the Star Wars stuff.

NBT914030d ago

Yeah. No way Disney will not cash in on episode VII with at least one game.

guitarded774030d ago Show
ThanatosDMC4030d ago (Edited 4030d ago )

Dont know about you guys, but YAY! No more $hitty Star Wars games. They didnt have quality control over their games and just license the franchise to whoever. Glad i'll never see Darth Vader dancing.

http://www.youtube.com/watc...

The Emperor dancing.... smh.

badz1494030d ago

1313 looks promising and it even won best show in one if those expo last year, right? Why cancel it altogether?

BitbyDeath4030d ago (Edited 4030d ago )

Probably for the best, has been a while since they had produced decent games.

Lucas Arts Vol 1 - http://ecx.images-amazon.co...

Lucas Arts Vol 2 - http://alexeysmirnov1977.na...

Lucas Arts Vol 3 - http://ecx.images-amazon.co...

Lucas Arts Vol 4 - http://image.gamespotcdn.ne...

DeadlyFire4030d ago

There is no damn way they can just kill Star Wars 1313.

Set that up on Unreal Engine 4 maybe which would require a complete rework of the game.

gedapeleda4030d ago

I remember the last good game was jedi academy.
Loved that game to death

+ Show (19) more repliesLast reply 4030d ago
joab7774031d ago

Its because they r gonna start making movie games for the new trilogy and mobile games.

jmc88884030d ago

They are going to LICENSE the game out.

Which can work, and also usually doesn't work.

Luckily Star Wars is such a known thing, it may be easier for others to make such a game compared to other franchises, but still.

What it means is 1313 isn't going to be made. First Assault isn't going to be made.

The studio has been disbursed and as they said (maybe as an update) in the article, the chances are effectively zero anyone will pick them up and be able to get those people making it to finish it.

What this also means is that if Disney licensed a game to be made, we're about two or so years from it being released. Probably late 2015. Sad, I was looking forward to a game in late 2013, and perhaps first assault sometime in 2014.

-Superman-4031d ago

Look at the game:
http://blogs-images.forbes....

My god, and they shut down it?
Good bye Indiana Jones and Star Wars

chukamachine4030d ago

I know, makes me sick. Wanted that game so much.

BozoLoco4030d ago

Wow. Looks great. I wonder how it plays... o_O

AngelicIceDiamond4031d ago (Edited 4031d ago )

I hope Star Wars ends up with a new developer.

EDIT: I should of saw this coming. Disney makes these commitments but ultimately doesn't come through in there game gaming division.

Never trust Disney when it comes to games.

Oh_Yeah4031d ago (Edited 4031d ago )

Either Bethesda or Platinum games would do Star Wars some justice I think.

DeadlyFire4030d ago

Sounds just like Lucasarts. haha

Genuine-User4031d ago

It's sad indeed. All those people without a job, hope they get another job and quick.

SITH4031d ago

Maybe you should read the article.

Thirty3Three4030d ago

They didn't 'cancel' them. I read the original article earlier today. They put it on 'halt' and may continue with it later.... God I hate articles like this

Jazz41084030d ago (Edited 4030d ago )

To me this is the lowest of the lowest. I was really excited for 1313 and because Disney has nothing on there mind but making money its ruined. You have to have passion and love to make great games that take devs sometimes a half of a decade to make but they do it out of the end product for the smiles from us gamers. What this tells me is Disney could care one less about us and will never ever see another penny, nickel, dime etc. From me. Sad day.

Mounce4030d ago

This is a late April Fools joke, right?.... Right?

Tomdc4030d ago (Edited 4030d ago )

I don't know what to make of this.

xxLuckyStrike4030d ago (Edited 4030d ago )

F this isht mann!!! F it!!!!!! Lol jk I guess the movie(s) come first

4030d ago
CalvinKlein4030d ago

damn, lucasarts made some amazing games back in the 90s and early 2000s.

MysticStrummer4030d ago

I couldn't care less if they expand the Star Wars series. George Lucas killed it himself. JJ Abrams might make a decent SW movie but I'd rather he stuck to Trek. Joss Whedon should have done SW. Anyway, I just want someone to make updated versions of X-Wing, Tie Fighter, and X-Wing vs Tie Fighter. PSN vs XBL, one side can be the rebels and one side can be the empire. It would be epic, though I know cross platform play would be highly unlikely.

DeadlyFire4030d ago

Time to fuck up a mouse.......

Syntax-Error4030d ago (Edited 4030d ago )

I said this was going to happen 20 days ago and all you morons w/ the exception of 3 "DISAGREED." Now what? Why dont you do the usual nerd thing you always do and make a dumb petition so that the executives at Disney can laugh at you.

http://n4g.com/news/1207588...

nthstew4030d ago

I don't get how shutting down lucas arts is good for star wars franchise .. Disney kill urself

+ Show (14) more repliesLast reply 4030d ago
aviator1894031d ago (Edited 4031d ago )

Um....whaaa?!

Star Wars 1313 looked incredible.

Just horribly depressing news. First, they cancel Clone Wars on CN, and now this.. Lucas should never have sold to Disney. >:/

Hopefully, the devs and everyone involved find safe havens elsewhere in the industry.

Sarobi4031d ago

I can't believe this.. I was so hyped for 1313..

ColinZeal4031d ago

I´m so bummed, 1313 looked great. :(

Moncole4031d ago (Edited 4031d ago )

1313 looked like a generic TPS in Star Wars. There will still be Star Wars games but not under Lucas Arts.

WUTCHUGUNNADO4031d ago (Edited 4031d ago )

Then you get a star wars film written by J.J Abrams.

MoveTheGlow4031d ago (Edited 4031d ago )

What sucks is that those 150 people are going to have to find a new job, which often means moving far away, and arranging for your family to do so also. I'm hoping that this isn't the case for most of these guys, who have been constrained by awful management and awkward, inconsequential projects for years. It's not their fault, it was their higher-ups.

But "Lucas should never have sold to Disney?" Lucas had older Star Wars fans just waiting for a new franchise offering that wasn't geared only toward kids, and hardly anything worked. At least they're trying now. And the same applies to their software branch...

Lucasarts was sitting on a goldmine of previous IP, stuff that had long-standing fans (not as long as Star Wars, but quite the same) and what did they do? Not too much in the past ten or so years. They made TFU, which would have been awesome with more money and time put into it, but oh well, it was a "meh" franchise instead, trying to be Uncharted and failing. It took them until 2009 to make any of their adventure games compatible with current PC hardware (finally getting on Steam), and that was just a couple of games, no more. Where was a new Day of the Tentacle, or at least something in the Maniac Mansion series? That would have taken so little in resources compared to their giant, lumbering TFU projects. And they'd have made a decent profit. But no, they sat on all of that IP, doing diddly-squat, burning millions on tepid Star Wars games.

The best move they made was giving Monkey Island to Telltale - that new series was nice. And this is why it's good news; Disney will be selling the licenses to these games, and I hope, beyond hope, that Telltale will pick up Full Throttle and reboot the thing.

+ Show (2) more repliesLast reply 4031d ago
majiebeast4031d ago (Edited 4031d ago )

Go FUUUUUUUUU yourself Disney they have killed so many developers this generation.

Well that killed my day completely. This is what i was affraid of when disney bought lucas arts. Hope they choke on disney infinity.

I bet the new Starwars movies are just gonna be 2 hours of Jarjar Binks and emo Anakin.

sarshelyam4031d ago

They killed Junction Point...whose release of Epic Mickey 2 was measured as a commercial failures when attached to the development/marketing budget/s.

They killed LucasArts, a studio that hasn't been profitable and only had one title on the horizon that likely wouldn't have put it back in the black.

Honestly, Disney's decision to shutdown studios is not a difficult one to understand. In an effort to wisely control the cash-flow, they remove the cash-hemorrhaging studios and streamline processes.

While I can honestly say that my nostalgia has taken a square kick in the nuts, I understand the business behind the decision/s. Shrewd though it may be, it will payoff in the long run to both Disney and the quality of licensed games we see coming out in the future.

KwietStorm_BLM4031d ago

Therein lies the problem in corporate world. They made the decision to buy the company in the first place, and instead of turning it around, the best decision is to kill it completely, and shortly after the purchase. And the talented people there who are now out of a job, had no say in any of it.

sarshelyam4031d ago

Again, you assume they bought it with intent to "turn it around". I'd say it was part of the deal, and in that they had to evaluate the longevity of a company that hasn't made a profit in quite some time...in fact...they were hemorrhaging money on a project that had a floating release.

As for the 150 people without a job...a ripple in the Force, certainly, but they're all talented and will find work suitable for their skills soon enough.

The end result is that instead of a company that hasn't been delivering content to their fans, they will own the property and projects and license it out to fresh development studios with new ideas and re-invigorate the franchise...something LucasArts has failed to do. I love Force Unleashed, but lets be frank...everything Star Wars related under their helm in the last 10-odd years have been squandered money-grabs that truly haven't captured the potential nor the imagination of the franchise.

I see only a bright future here for Star Wars games. I see new and more risky endeavors LucasArts wasn't willing to take. I see a burgeoning market leveraged by Disney dollars and shrewd business decisions that will allow for the growth of a beloved franchise.

MoveTheGlow4031d ago

Word, sarshelyam! Well freaking said.

Hufandpuf4030d ago

Have another bubble Sarshelyam!

I am depressed at all the potentially great SW games being canceled. But Lucas Art's game decisions weren't exactly working before they were acquired.

+ Show (1) more replyLast reply 4030d ago
dasbeer884031d ago

Thus another news added to the long list of controversy regarding Disney.

SJPFTW4030d ago (Edited 4030d ago )

Probably won't be bad as it seems. The greatest star wars game ever made, Knights of the Old Republic, was not developed by Lucas Arts, it was developed by Bioware. Neither was Battlefront 1 or 2 those were developed by Pandemic Games.

They will just get other publishers to publish the games, but continue to have outside developers develop games based in the star wars universe

Nitrowolf24031d ago

wow, those Star Wars game looked good to.

Jek_Porkins4031d ago

This is terrible news, mostly because it looked like we might finally get a decent couple of Star Wars games with 1313 and that XBLA shooter.

LucasArts was pretty bad at giving people what they wanted though, KOTOR 3, SWBF3, Jedi Academy 3 and a new Rogue Squadron as examples.

Show all comments (191)
120°

20 Awesome Canceled Games You'll Never Get To Play

You can understand some games getting canceled, but these awesome looking games still baffle us to this very day.

Read Full Story >>
culturedvultures.com
-Foxtrot39d ago

"Tommy saving the planet from an army of aliens after they abducted him and his entire bar, with the game ending on the promise that Tommy would be back, but that promise was never fulfilled"

The thing is with the original Prey 2 that Tommy wasn't even the main character, they replaced him with some generic looking space bounty hunter. It was a refreshing change to see an awesome Native American character with ancestral like powers fight aliens yet they ditched him. It was only after an outcry they showed much later in a new preview that Tommy was in the game as an NPC.

I'd have prefered a real sequel with Tommy as the main character, literally picking right up from the originals ending.

As for Eight Days...Sony really needs to pick this up

If Amy Hennig was still at ND, I'd have loved to see her tackle it after what she did with Uncharted.

isarai39d ago (Edited 39d ago )

I thought that was awesome too, and honestly i wish people werent so damn critical about cultural variety in games. I feel like people try to ruin devs lives if even one detail is off about their culture in a game and so everyone is too scared to try anymore

isarai39d ago (Edited 39d ago )

One of the lead engine programmers for Prey 2 at Human Head was my programming instructor when i was taking game design. This game was in limbo at the time and we asked once and only once about this game, the misery in his eyes when he told us "this is the 1st and only time ill ask you to never ask me about that game" was something ill never forget😅 he used a couple assets through the curriculum for teaching purposes but nothing very tangible. Just a function here, a 3d prop there. Such a shame. Years later i saw him at a magic tournament, we caught up and he still thinks about that game and how it's "practically done" probably sitting on a drive somewhere

shinoff218339d ago (Edited 39d ago )

Practically done? Jeez that fking blows because that looked much more interesting then what bethsada made. Don't get me wrong I enjoyed the one bethsada made.

Lmno looked interesting.
I'd knock titanfall and fez off the list. Add something else. Scarface 2 man only if would've been awesome. Prey 2 should be higher to. Either way not a bad list. Out of 20 there's only 2 I'd hate on.

isarai39d ago

That gen got a lot of games canned right before the finish line. Cipher Complex, Battlefront 3, legacy of kain dead sun just to name a few

XiNatsuDragnel39d ago

Games that need to come out: Battlefront 3, 8 days, and timesplitter 4.

Skuletor38d ago

One that's not on the list is Killing Day, I remember seeing the trailer in 2005 and being impressed at the time. Being Ubisoft you know it would have been a AAAA game too, lol
2 Days to Vegas and The Getaway 3 are two other games that seemed promising but never came out.

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70°

LucasArts Co-founder David Fox Reflects on Four Decades in the Gaming Industry

In an era where pixels ruled the screen and creativity sparked the imagination, a few names stand out as trailblazers in the gaming industry – David Fox is undoubtedly among them. As a co-founder of LucasArts, Fox played a pivotal role in shaping the landscape of gaming, leaving an indelible mark with iconic titles that continue to resonate with players worldwide. Join Sector as he shares captivating stories about the birth of LucasArts and the enthralling narratives behind some of the industry's most beloved classics.

mastershredder69d ago

eh…Gilbert, Purcell Schaffer were the trail blazers in that crew. David, while he did do some stuff once, like a real long ass time ago is more like b-list personality that specializes in reminiscing and signing ops at a convention.

120°

5 Ambitious Games That Shouldn't Have Been Canceled

Sometimes even promising titles never see the light of day. These are five of the most ambitious games that shouldn't have been canceled.

Read Full Story >>
gamefreaks365.com
GaboonViper270d ago

Silent Hills cancellation was a travesty.

mrbearbear269d ago

I still wonder to this day if it was a reboot, or sequel.

cammers1995269d ago

Lol. The tags made it so I didn't have to visit your website.

goldwyncq269d ago

Kojima wouldn't have started his own studio if Silent Hills didn't get cancelled so even if it stung at first, I'm fine with it.

chobit_A5HL3Y269d ago

i remember being so excited for patriots for years, only to have them release that siege trash. i hate how multiplayer games, pvp in particular, have ruined so many potentially good games.

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