This week in video games: May 16, 2016

This week, get a peek at The Force Awakens, Lego-style, and survive the zombie apocalypse in a high-def remake of Deadlight. But first, Disney shocks gaming fans with the announcement that it's cancelling the Infinity game franchise.

Disney cancels Infinity franchise, shutting down internal game development

Disney doesn't want to make video games anymore. The company announced last week that it was moving back to a licensing model for games after more than 10 years of developing titles in-house.

As a result, Disney Infinity, which allows specially designed action figures to be used in video games, is being shut down. The studio that developed the games, Avalanche Software, will be closed.

The company started making its own games in 1988, moved to licensing in 1997, and returned to internal development again in 2003.

Avalanche was acquired in 2005, the same year that Disney acquired Vancouver's Propaganda Games. A number of other studios were added to the Disney Interactive Studios roster over the next few years.

Propaganda was shuttered in 2011. An action role-playing game based on Pirates of the Caribbean was cancelled.

Disney Infinity was launched in 2013 and was Disney's opportunity to leverage its vault of characters and worlds for video-game entertainment. Disney Infinity 3.0 came out at the end of summer 2015 and focused on Star Wars.

Company representatives said the decision to get out of making games was due to the changing video-game business. In a conference call with investors, Disney CEO Bob Iger said: "We thought we had a really good opportunity to launch our own product in that space, the console space, but also the toys-to-life space. In fact, we did quite well with the first iteration and did okay with the second, but that business is a changing business and we did not have enough confidence in the business in terms of being stable enough to stay in it....We just feel it is a changing space and that we're just better of managing the risk of that business by licensing instead of publishing. We made a good product. I give the developer a lot of credit for the product they made."

The most recent game to come out for Disney Infinity was Marvel Battlegrounds, developed in Vancouver at United Front Games.

Deadlight next-gen reissue brings more zombies to life

Set in Seattle, Deadlight is the story of a zombie-apocalypse survivor trying to get to safety. It's a side-scrolling game that has players running and jumping, solving puzzles, and collecting items that fill in gaps in the story. You will need to fight the zombies at some point, but you're wise to avoid them if at all possible.

The indie game was originally created for Xbox 360 in 2012 by Tequila Works and is coming to PS4, Windows, and Xbox One next month in a version that has new animations and is in full 1080p high definition. Publisher Deep Silver is calling it the "director's cut".

Lego brings bricks to The Force Awakens

Disney may not want to make its own games anymore, but that doesn't mean there won't be Disney video games.

Case in point is the upcoming Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which will give players a chance to become Rey and Finn (and many others) when it is released on June 28.

The game will also bring some new gameplay experiences to the Lego Star Wars franchise, including the opportunity to pilot vehicles like the Millennium Falcon. A cover mechanic has also been added to the game to facilitate battles against the bad guys.

Most interesting is that piles of Lego bricks can be used to construct multiple different objects, giving players the chance to solve environmental puzzles in different ways.

The stories being told here include some that have not been told before, including how Han and Chewie captured those freaky Rathtars in the first place.

The film's cast are doing the voices for this game, too.

Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens will be playable on 3DS, PS3, PS4, PSVita, Wii U, Windows, Xbox 360, and Xbox One.