Gamers, it’s time to mourn the loss of one of our oldest and most respected gaming icons. After 31 years, LucasArts has been shuttered by Disney. Around 150 employees were laid off. According to Kotaku: Publicly, Disney is saying their current games could be licensed out to a different publisher or developer, but according to our source, that’s unlikely. Our source says Lucas has pursued the option for “one or both games,” but nothing happened. “With the teams now basically being dispersed I think both games are effectively dead forever,” our source said. It’s sad news but not unexpected. They…

If the recent purchase of Lucasfilm by Disney changed the harsh way that the Star Wars company has always treated their intellectual property, then Best Buy may be in good shape. Otherwise, as this image continues to go viral, there’s a good chance that they may be hearing from lawyers some time soon. That’s not to say that they didn’t pay for the rights to pull this stunt, but it appears to be a localized advertising attempt and was likely done without permission. Either way, it’s a good showing. …

It falls under the category of “don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone”. Disney’s three-year-old experiment with streaming movies is coming to a close at the end of the year. We hardly knew you. “The digital environment is rapidly evolving and Disney Movies Online does not have the flexibility that many users today demand”, a Disney spokesperson said in a statement. “We made a business decision to close the service until we are able to provide the greatest value and experience to our customers.” Here’s what it says about it on their website. Rest in peace. We hardly knew you. Related…

The science of entertainment is getting more complicated. Disney Research in Zurich and Walt Disney Imagineering at Cornell are working on Physical Face Cloning to be able to create animatronics characters that behave with the precision of a human face. First, they are designing a synthetic skin that can mimic the movements and tendencies of human skin. How the skin on a face reacts to motions such as talking has been problematic, but the Disney team hopes that a silicon based solution guided by computer simulations will be the answer. Here are two videos that they recently released showing the…

When people talk about mega-deals in the tech industry, it usually involves hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars. On Monday, a deal will be announced for $10-$15 million dollars. The waves of this deal will likely be felt by a good portion of the world in the near future. According to the New York Times, Disney Interactive Media and YouTube will be working on original video series in the form of shorts.  They will be produced by Disney and distributed on a co-branded channel on Disney.com and YouTube. There will be some amateur video pulled in from the plethora of videos uploaded to YouTube…

The wagons are circled at the Netflix camp as hundreds of thousands of subscribers cancelled in the last few months, but that doesn’t seem to scare the folks at Disney as they just renewed and expanded the contract between Netflix and ABC. Stocks have dropped by over 70% since the summer after recent debacles and poor decisions by the entertainment provider. That didn’t stop ABC from renewing current shows and adding Alias and Switched at Birth to the Netflix catalog. They also added Lost and Ugly Betty to the streaming segment….

Welp, Tron: Legacy is out on Friday, and if you currently exist, chances are you’re going to see it. In the event you don’t exist, there’s probably a hypothetical quantum world where your un-self will see it anyway. This movie’s moistening the loins of geeks the world over, and I’d be hard pressed to imagine you’re not one of them. You’re reading Techi, after all. With the advances in computing in the last 28 years, you’d have to think that writing Tron 2 would be quite a task – y’know, now that the internet exists and all, the world of Tron would seem to be limitless. But that’s just what Legacy director…

I hang out with an awful lot of comic book dorks, and many of them have been cowering in fear since Disney’s fateful acquisition of Marvel, wondering what impact The Mouse will have on their favourite superheroes. Generally, I’ve told them not to worry – Warner Bros has owned DC for, what, like, thirty years, and if you ask me, that’s been nothing but good news for Dr. Bruce Batman and Friends. But I digress. Check this bizness out, as it’s the first Disney/Marvel tie-in I’ve seen since the acquisition, and it’s geek chic as hell. Do I really need to explain it? It’s Marvel heroes, done up TRON-style….

These ads were produced to publicize Disney Star Wars Weekends, which are taking place every Friday to Sunday from May 21 to June 13. The Star Wars weekends feature characters from the original epic Star Wars movie saga and the newer animated series, Clone Wars. There is a Jedi Training Academy, and a Star Tours flight simulator attraction, as well as Star Wars characters and themed entertainment throughout the weekend. The event takes place at Disney’s Hollywood Studios theme park and events are being put on in addition to the regular attractions at the park. The Yellow Shoes Creative Group,…

Except Cars, of course. Nobody knows what Pixar was thinking with that one. Okay, so if one wanted to get picky, this isn’t a tech story proper – but how many geeks do you know who don’t love Pixar movies? Yeah, thought so. Which is why it seemed important to tell you that, though we associate sequels with things like Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, word on the street is that Toy Story 3 is another Pixar masterpiece. CNET reporter Daniel Terdman got access to an early screening in California and he seems mighty pleased: Pixar, yet again, has managed to turn animated silliness into top-tier filmmaking…