Oh noes! Infinity Blade: Dungeons on hold as Epic shutters Impossible Studios

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KO1aaC8WCAY

Last March, Epic Games president Mike Capps joined Apple’s marketing honcho Phil Schiller to announce Infinity Blade: Dungeons. After he had finished demoing work in progress code, I nearly peed my pants out of excitement. What the team was able to pull off in terms of huge environments, menacing atmosphere and eye-candy visuals was nothing short of phenomenal, leaving me salivating for more. If there ever was such a thing as a Retina iPad system seller, Infinity Blade: Dungeons would have to be it.

Then we heard the game got pushed back until some time in 2013 because implementing all these great ideas required “a little extra time”. As if that weren’t bad enough, Epic Games CEO has just confirmed that the project is now on hold until the company figures out its future following the closure of Impossible Studios, the team which was working on the game…

Here’s from Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney:

We’re closing Impossible Studios.

When former members of Big Huge Games approached Epic last year, we saw the opportunity to help a great group of people while putting them to work on a project that needed a team. It was a bold initiative and the Impossible folks made a gallant effort, but ultimately it wasn’t working out for Epic.

In addition to providing Impossible Studios employees with 3 months of severance pay, we’ll be giving the team the opportunity to form a new company with the Impossible Studios name and the awesome Impossibear logo.

This means that Infinity Blade: Dungeons is now on hold as we figure out the future of the project.

Here’s Dungeons demo at the iPad 3 keynote in March 2012.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iq53NK9dA34&t=7m19s

I’m a big fan of Infinity Blade and have been looking forward to playing this on my iPad for almost a year now.

Man, what a bummer!