Disney closes LucasArts, cancels Star Wars 1313

[Tigermegatron]

This happened yesterday, I posted on SSG but didn't have time to bring the news over here until now. Disney closed LucasArts after 31 years and pinkslipped its 150 employees, and canceled its next Star Wars game, SW 1313 - the bounty hunter game taking place deep in the lower depths of Coruscant that looked to emulate the PS3's awesome Uncharted games. The game Disney clarified could be revived through a licensee later, but it's not promising.

This comes on the heels of Disney pulling the plug on Star Wars The Clone Wars emmy-winning animated series, closing Lucas Animation, and pinkslipping all that team of talent; as well as rumors that Disney won't be renewing the Dark Horse comic book license at the end of the year.

Disney seems content to buy up these brands for their IP alone and let Licensees do most of the heavy lifting, with Disney helming movies to drive that licensing.

Cartoon Network did this with the Transformers cartoons,they bought the broadcast air rights for AEC & Animated for the sole purpose making sure they failed by giving them horrible time slots. Because CN figured if another network aired AEC & TFA They'd compete in Broadcast ratings & beat their exclusive in-house CN created cartoons.

[Onslaught Six]

Except that'd be impossible since A) Armada was initially aired on motherfucking Toonami, at its arguable height in 2002-2003, and B) AEC sucked.

[Tigermegatron]

Disney is a toy/media company that has a main target group of young kids audience from the ages of 2 through 7----->THEY ARE THE WORST COMPANY THAT COULD HAVE BOUGHT THE SW FRANCHISE.

Disney just probably wants SW Media that can sell the SW toys better. The SW Theathre movies sell SW toys the best. The Clone wars toys sell badly,so that's the reason disney canceled the CGI cartoon.

Disney canceled the SW DK comics because it's target age group of kids don't buy them. Currently,Comics sell in low volume units,So by default they advertise the brand less. Since the volume units for comics are less,they make less profit---->THIS RIGHT HERE WAS THE MAIN REASON DISNEY CANCELED THE SW DK COMICS.

As far as disney canceling the promised SW Video games,this happened because these games are not being aimed at disney's target kids age group. Disney probably also felt the previous target OLDER age group that bought & played the SW Video games DIDN'T BUY THE SW TOYS/OTHER MERCHANDISE in decent volume units,The game was created to advertise.

Disney is not doing anything different or new in their company buy out with SW. Companies who buy other companies ALWAYS GO THROUGH THE BOOKS,THEN THEY GET RID OF WHAT DOESN'T SELL,WHAT'S NOT FOR THEIR TARGET AGE GROUP. THEY KEEP WHAT SELLS DECENT OR WHATS FOR THEIR TARGETED AGE GROUP.

[Tigermegatron]

Except that'd be impossible since A) Armada was initially aired on motherfucking Toonami, at its arguable height in 2002-2003, and B) AEC sucked.

CN only aired Armada on Toonami for a brief time frame. A Big majority of the 52 Episodes of Armada were not on Toonami,instead they kept getting put on worse & more worse time slots.

[JediTricks]

Maniac Mansion was among my examples of non-SW games in the article, that was one of those games that really drove the industry forward in its day.

My oldest daughter would rather play Loom than anything on the Wii. She's played it through at least three times now. And Day of the Tentacle is one of my all-time favorite games. LucasArts made some great story/puzzle games back in the day.

The Force Unleashed 1 is a fantastic game, great fun if you can get past the conceit. The sequel is ok if you're already invested in the first, but doesn't have the weight of the original. Battlefront and Battlefront 2 were excellent, I know people who still play the latter online ON CONSOLE despite it being 8 years old on a prev-gen console.

I may have to give those a try, if they're available for PC.

That is seriously awesome about your daughter playing LOOM.

TFU is available for PC via Steam and through regular outlets, Amazon has the cheapest price for physical that I could find at $11.90 for the first game.

Sort of. It's actually worse than that. It was originally developed in house by Greg Weissman who later took possession of it and made a comic book for it. The comic ran for a very short while because some damned uppity lawyer at Disney wanted to make a name for himself saw an opportunity to lawyer ownership of it away from Weissman back to Disney. Who has done absolutely nothing with it since. Oh wait, I shouldn't say that, the did release season 1 and season 2 part 1 to dvd but never finished the damned job. Fuckers.

That's the problem of developing for an employer, look at Marvel, hell look at Superman for Siegel and Shuster.