Game Over for Disney's TRON: Evolution Studio Propaganda Games
New direction for game studio focusing on social online games over console titles
Although Walt Disney Studios’ TRON: Legacy has become a global box office smash, Disney Interactive Studios’ TRON: Evolution video games have not been able to capitalize on that success. Last year, Ubisoft’s James Cameron’s AVATAR: The Game, also had trouble reaching a mainstream audience. But for Disney, the TRON game has resulted in the closure of the Vancouver game studio, Propaganda Games. Disney already shut down production of the new Pirate of the Caribbean role-playing game last October, which was originally slated to ship this summer in tandem with the new 3D film, Pirates of the Caribbean: on Stranger Tides.
The studio was founded in 2005 by a pair of EA Canada veterans. The first project from the studio was a reboot of Turok, which also failed to deliver on its potential. Disney had originally planned to turn that old Nintendo 64 franchise into a new series of games beginning with the 2008 reboot.
TRON: Evolution launched in December a week before the Disney 3D movie sequel. The game served as a bridge between the two films. It failed to earn positive reviews and didn’t connect with the mainstream audience Disney successfully courted with the 3D movie. The game was built on Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 3 technology. Only the PlayStation 3 version of the game was released in stereo 3D.
A separate team had been working on Pirated of the Caribbean: Armada of the Damned for a few years. The game was last shown at E3 2010 and had received positive buzz. But Disney canceled the game in October as part of a restructuring of Propoganda Games.
Regarding the closure, Disney issued a statement: "Disney Interactive Studios confirms the closure of its Vancouver-based internal game development studio, Propaganda Games. The studio has completed all work associated with its most recent project."
Disney will focus more on casual social online games moving forward, as the studio makes the most of its purchase of Playdom last year.
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About the Author
John Gaudiosi
Editor-in-Chief
John Gaudiosi has been covering videogames for the past 20 years for outlets like The Washington Post, CNET, Wired Magazine and CBS.com. He has focused on the convergence of entertainment and videogames for outlets like Video Business, Home Media Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, The Hollywood Reporter and Variety. He currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of Gamerlive.TV and is also a freelance game columnist for Reuters and writes for outlets like Forbes.com, NVISION, Official PlayStation Magazine, EGM Now, Geek Monthly, PrimaGames.com, and Yahoo! Games. John also serves as the video game expert for NBC in Washington D.C. and has produced videogame documentaries for The History Channel and Starz Entertainment. John was named one of the Top 50 Game Journalists in the world by Next-Gen.biz in 2007. He is the co-author of Scholastic Books' How to Get into Videogames, Prima Publishing's Madden: Twenty Years of Videogame Football and Electronic Arts: The Official History.
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