Bucking a trend that had new editions of the game hit every year, Disney today announced that Disney Infinity 4.0 won’t be released in 2016. Instead, the company will continue to support and grow out its current game, Disney Infinity 3.0, which was released last summer.
The good news is that it means there’s no need this year to buy a new starter disc, which typically sold for $65 with a hub and new figures, or spend $30 for the game alone.
The bad news is that it means there won’t be any major overhaul to the game’s core systems, hub world or Toy Box mode.
Instead, Disney is riding on the framework of Disney Infinity 3.0, using it to support at least four more playsets and a stream of new figures.
“For all existing fans, this is great news to them," said John Vignocchi, vice president of production at Disney Interactive. "For people on the fence about buying into the game, we’re giving them a chance to take another look.
"We’ve always positioned Disney Infinity as a family gaming platform and brought some of the best developers to work on it, and we feel like we have achieved a level of quality with 3.0 that is indicative of the Disney brand."
That said, news today that Disney won’t be investing in another major update to Disney Infinity this year does come on the heels of the company’s earnings report earlier this month that showed the game isn’t selling as well as expected.

"At Games," according to the financial report, "growth was due to higher licensing revenue from the success of Star Wars: Battlefront, partially offset by lower Disney Infinity results. The decrease from Disney Infinity was due to higher inventory reserves and lower unit sales volume."
When I asked Vignocchi if the two were connected, he said they weren’t, and maintained that Disney is still deeply invested in its Disney Infinity games.
"We are number one in this category," he said. Disney’s earnings report "did not have an influence on whether to put out this year.
"The company has been completely behind Disney Infinity. If you look at all of the creative content coming out this year, you can see they are still proud and still 100 percent behind us."
Recent promotions within the company do seem like they could work well for Disney Infinity.
James Pitaro, the new co-chairman of Disney’s consumer products division, is also the president of Disney Interactive.
"He’s been a big supporter of Disney Infinity over the years," Vignocchi said of Pitaro. "Jimmy’s appointment as chairman is significant because it shows our company’s commitment to the merging of physical and digital content together."
Disney Infinity meets Power Stone

The biggest evidence that Disney is still behind its series of open-world exploration and creation games is the flow of content the company announced during today’s video event.
The 15-minute video laid out plans for four new playsets, each delivering unique gameplay to Disney Infinity 3.0 and a number of new characters.
"Disney Infinity will support all of the major events and theatrical releases at Walt Disney in 2016," Vignocchi told Polygon. "This year we will release four new playsets, each introducing unique gameplay for the platform. Each of the playsets will represent new content from our core properties."
Those properties, he said, are Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars.
The first playset is the one we already know about. The Marvel Battlegrounds playset, which hits March 15, brings with it four-player rumbles using any of the previously released or yet-to-be-released Marvel characters.

Vignocchi likened the game to Capcom Dreamcast classic Power Stone, and said it would include destructible environments, a light story and level transitions.
The March release of a Marvel playset leaves Disney, Pixar and Star Wars for the remaining three playsets, though Vignocchi declined to talk about them.
The new characters kicked off today with Judy and Nick figures from Zootopia. The Marvel Battlegrounds playset will include Captain America figure in a Civil War-inspired costume. Disney will also be releasing Ant-Man, Vision and Black Panther in Civil War costumes on March 15, along with Spider-Man in his black suit. Black suit Spider-Man was previously available only as part of a starter pack.
Finally, March 15 will see the release of Baloo, tied to the Jon Favreau remake of The Jungle Book.
"With all of the content we are releasing this year, this will be the largest Disney Infinity release to date," Vignocchi said.
What won’t change
While Disney Infinity 3.0’s core game mechanics won’t change, that doesn’t mean there won’t be additions to the game outside of the playsets and toys.
"There will be elements added inside the hub throughout the year," Vignocchi said. "We will be running a bunch of Toy Box TV content to support the releases."
He said the team will also be designing playable games and levels that can be accessed through the hub’s Toy Box mode.

What won’t be changing is the face of the hub. The design of that central world, like the game’s mechanics, won’t be getting any sort of upgrade while Disney Infinity remains at 3.0.
"The hub is designed very specifically as an onboarding mechanism to help players fully understand the breadth of content inside of Disney Infinity," Vignocchi said. "Doing any changes to that would change the overall flow of the hub."
All of today’s news was announced during something called Disney Infinity Next, a video that is designed to not just lay out the future of Disney Infinity, but also to give viewers some insight into the process of making Disney’s games, movies and other content.
"There will be more episodes coming this year," he said. "We haven’t determined the cadence yet; it needs to line up with retail and releases."
And there seems to always be more news to share for a game that stretches across so many different properties.
BB-8, Darkwing Duck, VR and AR
I asked Vignocchi about the strange absence of Star Wars: The Force Awakens fan favorite BB-8 from the current roster of Disney Infinity’s Star Wars figures.
Is there a BB-8 figure in our future?
"We are absolutely investigating BB-8," he said. "It’s a challenge because BB-8 is a totally different sort of character than we’ve done before; he’s not a vehicle, not a biped or even a . We’re looking at what we can do for that particular character. We will release it when it makes sense, if we’re going to."
Darkwing Duck, a long-held personal favorite of Vignocchi’s, is also still not in development as a figure. At least not yet.

Disney Infinity continues to poll fans for their favorites, and Darkwing Duck is high on the list, though that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s coming to the game as a figure.
Finally, I asked Vignocchi about virtual and augmented reality.
With VR or AR headsets planned for many of the platforms on which Disney Infinity 3.0 is available, is the company looking at bringing the game to these different reality headsets?
"We are looking at the technology," he said. "Finding ways we can leverage technology to provide new and compelling experiences for our fans is a priority to us at Disney."

Defeat the gangs of New York to take back the city Tom Clancy’s The Division arrives a week from today, and you can get caught up on the game’s story and setting in a launch trailer released today by publisher Ubisoft.
The Division takes place in a post-pandemic New York City, with chaos reigning in the aftermath of a virus that has decimated the city’s population. The game’s title refers to a plainclothes military unit that is activated in an attempt to restore order. The Division plays out in a one-to-one virtual recreation of midtown Manhattan; the pandemic has cut off access to the other boroughs, even though we’ve seen them in previous trailers.
Developer Massive Entertainment has run multiple betas for The Division, with the most recent one, an open beta last month, drawing more than 6 million players. You can check out our beta impressions, which included thoughts on the Dark Zone PvP mode, in the video below.
The Division launches March 8 on PlayStation 4, Windows PC and Xbox One. It was announced at E3 2013 and was originally scheduled to be released in 2015.

Last week, Polygon’s offices were sent a big pack of press materials about the 30th anniversary of Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns. The accompanying information said that it looked forward the recipient’s editorial coverage of the occasion, and that it hoped “you have your own Frank Miller story to tell." Opinion

This is the usual boilerplate for this kind of thing. It’s not like I get on social media or draft a big story for every email asking for coverage or every box of comics that arrives on my desk. But the irony of the situation struck me.
"The 80-page giant comic cost 25 cents, but I bought it anyway."
The more I chewed it over, the more I did want to write something, about how I was born the month the final issue of The Dark Knight Returns hit shelves. About growing up with a Batman who’d never not been influenced by Miller’s work.
So, here’s my Frank Miller story.
I’m 11 and I’m at a Barnes & Noble. My mom says I can get one book. Lately my interests have been drifting down a thin, lazy creek — from the Richard Donner Superman films to Superman: The Animated Series to Batman: The Animated Series — and they’re about to hit a mighty, rushing river I’ll be following for the rest of my life. Standing in the graphic novel section (this is 1997, so it consists of a magazine rack on top of a single column of shelves), I pick up a book called Batman: Year One.

I’m not sure I like the art inside. Every scene sort of looks like somebody put a different color of cellophane over the lens of a camera. But the back cover says it’s about the first year of Batman’s history, and I instinctively know that I’m not allowed call myself a fan of a comic book character unless I know literally everything about them first. I get my mom to buy it for me. It is the first American comic I have ever consciously purchased.

There are some parts of the book I won’t understand for years, like what it means when Catwoman’s pimp says "That vice I smell? That crazy vet bit — thas old, man," after a disguised Bruce Wayne approaches one of his girls. I carry the book around in my 6th grade backpack for weeks. I practically memorize it. Every panel of David Mazzucchelli’s art still instantly inspires feelings of deep nostalgia for me. "Your feast is nearly over. From this moment on, none of you are safe," I can still recite it from heart.
The nearest comic book shop is two towns over and there’s no such thing as a wiki yet, so I start ordering trade paperbacks and graphic novels on Amazon and devouring every superhero comic in the public library. They’re in Non-Fiction, on the same shelves with the How To Draw books.
I’m 12. I read The Dark Knight Returns and it scares me. Batman uses guns. The Joker calls him by pet names and applies his own makeup. Alfred dies. In the end Batman is raising an army of youths to fight the… government, I think?
But it’s got a girl Robin and I like that, even if there is a weird scene where she hugs Batman when he’s completely naked. Everything says that it’s the book that made people realize that superheroes can be for adults, and at the age of 12 that’s a hill I will die on. I decide that if it scares me, it’s probably supposed to be scary.

I’m 15, and just starting to look at colleges. No campus visit is complete until I check out the local comic book store. I read Miller’s sequel to The Dark Knight Returns, The Dark Knight Strikes Again, as it comes out. The art is weird. The colors are nuts. Superman and Wonder Woman have mid-air sex so hard that volcanoes erupt and it’s the goofiest thing I’ve ever seen. I decide it’s got a few good fight scenes in it, some good one-liners and mostly forget about it.
I’m 18 and the Sin City movie is in production, so I ask for the first volume for Christmas. I imagine how desperate Goldie must have been to go to someone as clearly violent and emotionally stunted as Marv for protection, and shudder. I go see Sin City in theaters. "Is every woman in this film a sex worker?" I wonder. I remember the exception: Marv’s lesbian parole officer — she’s forced to watch as Elijah Wood eats her severed arm and is later murdered by the police.

I realize that I have never read a Frank Miller book with an original female character who didn’t fall into two categories: sex worker — or victim of a brutal beating or murder. Even the first female Robin gets sliced up by a bad guy in the climax of The Dark Knight Strikes Again. Come to think of it, Miller also seems to enjoy characterizing his extra-creepy male villains as having ambiguous sexuality or gender. You’re not threatening, it seems, until you’re sexually threatening to a straight guy.
I’m 19 and I pick up All-Star Batman and Robin #1. The first scene is one in which journalist Vicki Vale complains at length about Bruce Wayne’s ethics but drops everything to go on a date with him as soon as Alfred, not even Bruce, calls her to arrange it. It includes a double page spread of her trying on different outfits in pink lace lingerie, babbling about how she can’t believe she’s going on a date with Bruce Wayne. It might be the first time since I began buying monthly comics that I decide a Batman story isn’t worth reading.
I’m still 19 and Frank Miller announces Holy Terror, Batman, a book he wants to write where Batman "kicks Al-Qaeda’s ass." I can’t even begin to articulate all the reasons why that sounds like a terrible idea. While speaking to NPR about his personal reaction to the September 11th attacks a few months later, Miller would say: "For the first time in my life I know how it feels to face an existential menace." I think that I’ve never heard something so white, straight, male and sheltered. He will eventually repackage the idea as simply Holy Terror, after jettisoning any reference to the superhero.

I am 20 and I’m majoring in Creative Writing, because I want to write comic books for a living. 300 is out, but I’m waiting for it to hit the local discount theater so I won’t have to pay more than a penny per Spartan soldier to see it. My roommate is double-majoring Pre-Med/Classics and loves terrible movies, so she drags me along. We roll our eyes when the Spartans make fun of Athenian men for being "boy lovers." Years later, I’ll read the original 300 and be shocked only by Miller’s audacity in writing an effusive comic book love letter to what he characterizes as a culture of peak masculinity — while erasing the extensive evidence that homosexuality was not merely commonplace in Grecian militaries, but occasionally embraced as tactically sound. Instead, he codes Xerxes as the Sissy Villain.
I’m 24, I’m in my first year of managing a "nerd entertainment" news site and a guy I’m dating gives me a collection of Miller’s early work on Daredevil. I read it because I know it was Miller’s first big break, and to widen my knowledge base in Marvel comics.

Elektra is introduced, glorified and murdered in a single volume. At this point I don’t even bat an eye. I know the character’s history from years of osmotically accumulating comics knowledge. Like Catwoman in Batman: Year One, she’s another iconic comic book badass-lady-until-she-wants-the-hero-as-a-boyfriend with a Frank Miller-penned origin. Like Barbara Gordon in The Killing Joke, she’s brought into an iconic story arc about a male character in order to take the brunt of a terrible act of violence, and other writers will work for decades to reclaim her agency and humanity in her universe.
My copy of Batman: Year One contains an introduction written by Miller in 1988, a year after the comic first hit shelves — and two years after I was born. In it, he describes being eight years old, standing in a supermarket and flipping through his very first Batman comic. He paints a picture of his young self being immediately drawn to a dark, damp and beautiful Gotham City, full of terrors … but a Gotham in which the scariest monster of them all was on our side.

"A madman laughed wildly, maliciously. The laughter echoed forever … Glistening wet, black against the blackened sky, a monster, a giant, winged gargoyle, hunched forward, pausing at a building’s ledge, and cocked its head, following the laugh’s last seconds," he writes.

"The 80-page giant comic cost 25 cents," he concludes, "but I bought it anyway." The copy of Batman: Year One that I flipped through in that Barnes & Noble in 1997 was $9.95 ($13.95 Canada).
I’m 11 and I’m at a Barnes & Noble. My mom says I can get one book.
It’s hard to imagine Frank Miller anticipating that his story, with that introduction, would ever fall into the hands of an 11-year-old, mixed-race girl, much less that it would ignite in her a life-long passion not simply for Batman or superheroes but for comics as a whole.
Miller doesn’t mention who wrote, who drew, who edited the book that made him a fan, the book that gave him an obsession that he was lucky enough to turn into a successful career — a career that, for better and for worse, has made an indelible impact on the history of comics.
And a part of me wishes that I could forget, too.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, Polygon as an organization.

On both Xbox One and Windows PC Killer Instinct’s third season launches March 29 on Xbox One and Windows 10, Microsoft announced today during its big spring showcase rollout of news.
The newest season of the fighting game delivers three stars from the roster of 1996’s Killer Instinct 2 — Kim Wu, Tusk and Gargos — along with guest stars Rash from Battletoads and the Halo franchise’s Arbiter. 343 Industries, which aided in production, explained why the latter character is an Arbiter, not The Arbiter, over the weekend. Four more characters will be revealed later.
The Windows PC and Xbox One editions have cross-play and cross-buy functionality, the announcement noted, including fight stick support. This will be the debut on Windows PC for the fighting game franchise, which rebooted on Xbox One in with that console’s launch in 2013.

In each episode of Quality Control, Polygon editor-at-large Justin McElroy talks to a critic after they review a new game and allows them to add a little bit of extra context and insight. Why did they feel the way they did? What do they wish they had been able to discuss in more depth in their review? Also: Did they play it wrong?
In this episode, we talk with Griffin McElroy about his review of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess which you can find right here. We’d love to know what you think in the comments below!

Read the review
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Email: qualitycontrol at polygon dot com
Music: Goodwill by The Custodian of Records

The writers behind Game of Thrones know that it can be difficult to keep track of who’s related to who, which family is supposed to be in power and perhaps most importantly, who’s alive and who’s not.
To prepare fans for the upcoming sixth season, HBO has released a few animated videos that go over some of the history and lore of Westeros. The series, which includes 15 episodes in total, will focus on various families, regions and battles, and will be narrated by members of the cast.

Although only two episodes are available online right now, the rest will be included in the Blu-ray edition of the show’s fifth season. In the first video, Ser Barristan Selmy himself, Ian McElhinney, provides in-depth details about the fall of Aerys the Mad King and the rise of Robert Baratheon. Easily one of the most pinnacle moments in the series, the video is a great refresher, especially for those looking to start the show again from the beginning.
The second video explores the “Many-Faced God," which is otherwise known as the God of Death. It’s a symbol with immense importance in the city of Braavos and will be explored much further this upcoming season.
Game of Thrones returns to HBO April 24.

Another publisher scales back on 2016’s big gaming expo Publisher Activision will be at E3 2016, but the company won’t have dedicated floorspace at the show. Instead, the company behind Call of Duty, Skylanders and Guitar Hero will rely on its partners — namely Sony Computer Entertainment — to showcase some of its wares.
The new Call of Duty game from Infinity Ward will be at this year’s E3, the company confirmed today, but attendees will have to visit the PlayStation booth to see it.
“In June, we’re going to be at E3 showcasing gameplay from Infinity Ward’s ambitious new game," Activision said on its official blog. "We’re looking forward to sharing exciting new details about the next great Call of Duty game in partnership with our friends at PlayStation. We’re proud to be participating in this premier video game event, but won’t have an Activision booth on the show floor."
Activision isn’t the only major publisher forgoing a formal booth presence at E3 2016; Electronic Arts announced earlier this year that it will break from tradition and hold a dedicated off-site event called EA Play instead of showing games on the E3 show floor.
This isn’t the first time Activision has officially broken from E3. The company bowed out of E3 2008.
In recent years, Activision’s floor presence at E3 has consisted primarily of meeting rooms, where behind-closed-doors presentations were held, and large displays showing trailers for the company’s upcoming games.
Polygon has reached out to the Entertainment Software Association, which runs E3, for comment on Activision’s move.

Grab a free anniversary theme while you’re at it Sony is honoring the Resident Evil franchise this week with a major PlayStation Store sale. To celebrate the series’ 20th anniversary — the first game launched on the original PlayStation in March 1996 — Resident Evil games and downloadable content are discounted until March 8 at 11 a.m. PT.
Capcom recently announced that it will release remastered versions of Resident Evil 4, Resident Evil 5 and Resident Evil 6 later this year for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The PlayStation 3 versions of these games are among those on sale, for those not willing to wait for the current-generation updates. The PS4 remaster of Resident Evil 0, which launched earlier this year, is also offered at a discount.
Check out these and other highlights from the sale below. For the full list of offers, including a free 20th anniversary PS4 theme, visit the PlayStation Store page.

Resident Evil 4 (PS3) — $6.99
Resident Evil 0 (PS4) — $15.99
Resident Evil 6 (PS3) — $6.99
Resident Evil 3: Nemesis (PS3/PSP/Vita) — $1.49
Resident Evil 5 Gold Edition (PS3) — $10.49
Resident Evil (PS4) — $12.99
Resident Evil 2 (PS3/PSP/Vita) — $1.49
Resident Evil Code: Veronica X (PS3) — $4.99

It fixes some King’s Fall bugs, too Destiny’s February update includes a host of tweaks to how the Crucible works, including a new option for lone-wolf play and an attempt to insulate players from people who have laggy connections, developer Bungie announced today.
First up is an ammo adjustment. In an effort to increase the use of primary weapons in the Crucible, Bungie is changing all three-on-three gametypes (Trials of Osiris, Skirmish, Salvage, Elimination and any rotating playlists) so that players will no longer spawn with special ammo — they’ll have to wait for it to appear.
The next change appears to be inspired by player complaints about last week’s Iron Banner event, which featured the Rift gametype. Since Rift requires cooperation between teammates, solo players grouped onto a squad tended to fare poorly when matched up against a fireteam. Bungie is introducing “freelance" playlists, which will be accessible only by players who aren’t in a fireteam. They’ll be available for both three-on-three (Elimination, Salvage, Skirmish) and six-on-six (Clash, Control, Rift) matches.

Must Read

Bungie details Destiny’s Crimson Days event, including ‘Hotline Bling’ emote

Bungie debuted connection-focused matchmaking settings during the last Iron Banner. That matchmaking update is now active for Control, Rumble and Skirmish, and will be implemented for Trials of Osiris starting tomorrow. However, Bungie said it’s limited by its Destiny tools: The studio can only enable the new settings on five playlists at a time. Crimson Doubles — the new mode for this month’s Valentine’s-themed Crimson Days event — and Clash are next on the list. In a future update, Bungie plans to apply the settings to all of the Crucible.
The final Crucible update in Destiny’s v2.1.1 patch is something Bungie is calling "Damage Referee." The feature is designed to ensure that players with good connections have a good experience, while players with poor connections have a bad experience. At the moment, people stuck playing opponents who have slow connections sometimes find that the game unfairly prioritizes the latter group.
"If your connection is bad, we’ll be giving you even more reasons to improve it," said Paul Lewellen, a networking engineer at Bungie. "Expect to lose fights a lot more often, even if you think you shot first or escaped behind cover in time. Things will get much better once you fix your connection, but at least you’ll receive fewer angry messages in the meantime."
Destiny’s February update will also fix some problems with the King’s Fall raid: namely, a camera bug in the Daughters of Oryx fight, and an issue in the Oryx encounter with Ogres that teleport. The update will go live Feb. 9, and Crimson Days will begin once it does.

The Western version stops just short Nintendo confirmed that Western Fire Emblem Fates players won’t be able to pet or rub their teammates’ faces, but that doesn’t mean the feature is gone altogether. We delved into the localized version of the upcoming Nintendo 3DS game to see what Nintendo replaced petting (also known as “skinship") with. Check out the footage from our recent livestream above to see our discovery in action.
To elaborate: In both versions of Fire Emblem Fates, players have the option to visit their team members in their personal private quarters.

Upon entering, the protagonist chooses which person he or she would like to spend more time with, which then invites them to join you.

This launches into a cutscene which, in the Japanese edition of the latest Fire Emblem games, involved interacting with the chosen teammate, touching their face by using the touchscreen. The upcoming American release does this a bit differently.

The animations involved in that interaction are left intact, but the actual tactile portion has been eliminated, just as Nintendo previously announced.
What does remain, however, are the status bonuses accrued by getting intimate with a party member. Just as in the Japanese version, the player’s relationship with their teammate improves after the truncated scene.

Nintendo referred to its decision to remove the petting minigame itself as a not "unusual" change for the localization.
"Even in the Japanese original version, we have not included any features which are considered inappropriate in Japan," a representative for Nintendo told us.
"Having said that, however, making changes are not unusual when we localize games, and we have indeed made changes in these games."
The state of the petting minigame in the Western Fire Emblem Fates is one such change; the removal of a scene that referenced drugging a character is another difference from the original version.
Fire Emblem Fates launches on Feb. 19 in two versions: Birthright and Conquest. A Special Edition set houses both storylines — and a third, Revelation, which will also come as downloadable content — on one cartridge.