Industry Video game industry Key people Warren Spector
Art Min Website junctionpoint.com Founded 2005 | Defunct January 29, 2013 Products Video games Founder Warren Spector Ceased operations January 29, 2013 | |
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Former type Subsidiary of Disney Interactive Studios Headquarters Austin, Texas, United States Parent organizations The Walt Disney Company, Disney Interactive Studios | ||
Junction Point Studios was a video game developer based in Austin, Texas. It was owned by Disney Interactive Studios.
Contents
History
The studio was established in 2005 by Warren Spector and Art Min. The new studio is based around several former employees of Ion Storm, where Spector and Min previously worked.
From inception up until their acquisition by Disney Interactive Studios, Junction Point was working on a Source Engine based game that was to be distributed on Valve's Steam distribution network. This was later revealed to be a new game in Valve's Half-Life series which was cancelled when Junction Point was acquired.
In July 2007, Disney Interactive Studios acquired Junction Point Studios.
Junction Point developed Epic Mickey, a Wii game which was released on November 25, 2010 in Europe and on November 30 in North America. The game is about Mickey Mouse's adventure in Wasteland, a world where forgotten characters like Oswald the Lucky Rabbit live. Junction Point has indicated that its game will be a "combination of action and roleplaying, traditional narrative and player choice", and will use Emergent Game Technologies' Gamebryo engine. The game has been developed for the Wii console platform.
On March 21, 2012, Warren Spector announced that a sequel, Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two, was in development for Wii and Wii U.
On January 29, 2013, Disney Interactive Studios confirmed the closure of the studio.
Name
There has been speculation regarding the name "Junction Point" — apparently, this name was used by a canceled game at Looking Glass Studios, where Spector once worked. According to available descriptions, this game was a "massively multiplayer fantasy role-playing game, changed in midstream to a single-player science-fiction role-playing game."
In March 2007, Spector explained the name in an interview:
When I was with Looking Glass, the last thing I worked on with them on was a concept that I came up with along with Doug Church and some other guys. It was a very different approach to multiplayer online games called Junction Point. I loved the name and concept. I'm not revealing anything too dramatic since we're not doing the game, though I'd love to some day, but the name spoke to me more as a name for a studio than a name for a game. [...] It's also nice that it abbreviates to JPS, which rolls off the tongue.