Disney Shuts Down LucasArts Just 154 Days After Acquiring It

via techcrunch.com

Pour one out for the Gold Guy tonight, my fellow gamers. A sage pillar of the industry has fallen.

Just 154 days after acquiring LucasArts as part of their larger, $4B acquisition of Lucasfilm, Disney has dissolved the classic video game development company.

Beginning today, Disney will continue to license out the LucasArts properties (namely Star Wars), but has ceased the development of all internal projects.

While the move was not unforeseen (the company’s last few games haven’t been very successful, and rumors of projects being shuttered have trickled in since the acquisition), that doesn’t make today’s news any less disheartening. A part of my childhood — a part of an entire generation of gamer’s collective childhood, really — goes down with LucasArts.

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Disney acquires Lucasfilm for $4.05 billion, plans more Star Wars movies

via engadget.com

Disney is already one of the biggest media companies around, and it's now set to become even bigger. The company announced late today that it's acquiring Lucasfilm Ltd., currently 100 percent owned by founder George Lucas, for $4.05 billion in a cash and stock deal. That of course includes the rights to both the Star Wars and Indiana Jones film franchises, as well as Lucasfilm properties like Industrial Light & Magic and Skywalker Sound. What's more, the press release announcing the deal also confirmed that Disney is now targeting 2015 for a release of Star Wars: Episode 7, and that its "long term plan is to release a new Star Wars feature film every two to three years." No word yet on a proper release of the original, original trilogy.

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George Lucas: I Sold Lucasfilm To Disney To ‘Protect It’

via techcrunch.com

Though it’s obviously more of a show business story than it is a technology industry story, the news of Lucasfilm’s $4 billion sale to Disney has reverberated throughout the tech world this afternoon.

This is partly just because of Star Wars’ cult status among the geeks (and I use that term with all respect and love) who make the web go ’round. But also, Lucasfilm has straddled the worlds of tech and film in a unique way, with its headquarters in San Francisco instead of LA and its strong operations in tech- and engineering-heavy things such as visual effects, sound design, animation, and of course gaming.

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