The Most Obvious Tie-In of All Time

Variety reports that Disney Interactive Studios are working on a Tr2n game to tie into the movie that will be coming out in 2011. Seeing as the entire Tron universe is focused around software and video games, this seems like a given. So much so, that if Disney Interactive Studios was in a different fiscal situation, we wouldn’t even bother talking about it right now.

What makes this insider tip interesting is that it comes at a time when DIS is laying off a pretty startling number of developers. Nearly 30 devs from DIS-owned Propaganda Studios were left without a job recently. Propaganda was responsible for last year’s painfully mediocre Turok and were rumored to be working on a Turok 2. Well, if that was indeed their business plan then the lay offs aren’t really a huge surprise given Turok’s luke-warm sales. Supposedly the studio feels Tr2n to be a more worthwhile investment than Turok 2, which makes sense from a shareholder’s perspective.

But on a less sober note about Tr2n. I still can’t get past that stupid number in the middle of the name. Disney, you had a fantastic opportunity to name your film in the same vein as its primary themes by officially naming it Tron 2.0 (which the fans call it anyway) but no, you decide to take a lesson from the Se7en book of naming and lodge an inappropriate number into the title. If you felt the need to include a number, why not make it the proper l337 spelling and call it 7r0n? It would still look dumb, but at least some massive nerds like myself would like it.

That's how dumb that 2 looks.

In regards to the Tr2n game, I’m actually glad to hear that it’s already in development. Most movie tie-in games look like they were made in about six months so to hear that Tr2n will likely have two years of development time is refreshing to say the least. Could you imagine how tragic it would be to have a film set in a video game, but then to have the game based off of said movie suck horribly? I guess cynical bastards like me would have fun reviewing it, but that’s about all the joy that would come out of it.

We’ll see once 2011 finally rolls around.

-That Guy

PS: While critics like me rip on games, we never hold any ill will to the developers themselves and my best wishes go out to victims of these recent lay offs and their families.