It has been a few month since Disney Interactive canceled Disney Infinity, shutting down the gaming studio (Avalanche Software) that worked with them since Infinity’s release back in 2013. Its shut down left nearly 300 developers out of work. But a handful of those developers have found new work by joining castAR and creating a new studio: castAR Salt Lake City.
According to Polygon, this morning the former Avalanche Software members created their new mixed-reality gaming studio with the help from former Valve employee Jeri Ellsworth. CastAR, the Palo Alto based company, has stated that they are dedicated and committed to launching a mixed reality gaming and entertainment platform; so with this addition to the development team, castAR will more than double in size, underscoring their commitment launching mixed reality gaming.
The augmented reality developer, castAR, was formed back in 2011 and its small team, consisting of team significantly smaller than Avalanche, will now add more than 30 new employees, pushing them to more than 70 members. They will work alongside Steve Parkis, President and COO of castAR, who is known to have led Zynga and Storm 8. Parkis stated that
Our new castAR SLC team has creatively-inspired talent that has delivered at the highest levels of quality. We’re excited to have them join us in creating a new generation of gaming through mixed reality experiences. With their experience in bringing massive franchises to life through breakthrough interactive design, the addition of this team is our next bold step in launching a dynamic platform that will bring awe-inspiring mixed reality to households.
Most recently, the company also revealed the addition of Darrell Rodriguez as their new CEO. Rodriguez was formerly the president of LucasArts and COO of Electronic Arts Los Angeles. But not much else was mentioned in today’s announcement, no future specific projects were mentioned. But according to Yahoo, the company has been experimenting with technology similar to that of Microsoft’s HoloLens, allowing the ability for board games to virtually unfold and evolve on a tabletop. Until then, we hope to see what this new team of developers will come out with.