The Walt Disney Company will sell FoxNext Games and Cold Iron Studios to Scopely, a games studio that produces mobile games for Android and iOS.
FoxNext is a developer and publisher of VR content that Disney acquired as part of its purchase of 21st Century Fox in 2019. The developer had already released a VR Planet of the Apes game and a Predator VR game is listed for release on Steam. Cold Iron Studios was previously developing a game based on the Alien franchise, which could have possibly supported VR.
As reported by GamesIndustry.biz, while the deal will see Scopely acquire both publisher FoxNext Games and developer Cold Iron Studio, it will not include the Disney IP portfolio of licensed games, which includes the Alien series, as part of the now Disney-owned Fox IP.
This leaves the fate of the unnamed Alien game very much up in the air. We heard nothing about the game since early 2018, when a section of the FoxNext website listed a VR Studio and thus led to possibility of VR support for the upcoming Alien title. The game was due to be Cold Iron Studio’s first, led by industry veterans who had worked across a bunch of franchises like Borderlands, Metroid, Bioshock and DOOM.
Despite the acquisition deal not including the licensed IP games, there is a chance that the IP could be licensed out to Scopely as part of a separate deal. That being said, Scopely has only developed for mobile platforms thus far, and so it might be strange to see them pivot into traditional games, and potentially VR, as part of the acquisition.
As it stands, Cold Iron’s website only contains an image of the Alien from the franchise in question, with a “We’re Hiring” banner linking to open FoxNext positions. It’s unclear how long the site has shown the Alien image, but it might be an indication that the game was still being worked on recently.
We have reached out to contacts at both Scopely and Disney for comment on the status of the Alien game, and will update the article if we receive a response.
The post Disney Sells VR Game Developer FoxNext, Alien Game’s Fate Uncertain appeared first on UploadVR.
from UploadVR https://ift.tt/38uvQwk
via IFTTT
No comments:
Post a Comment