Fantasia: Music Evolved Release Date Announced
Disney’s Fantasia: Music Evolved will be hitting store shelves on 21 October according to a new trailer released today. It will release for Xbox One and Xbox 360 and features the Kinect accessory as an important part of the gameplay. As part of the trailer, Harmonix also showed off a variety of new gameplay elements as well as an additional hub environment.
Harmonix, the team behind Guitar Hero and Rock Band, is developing the game. They have previous experience in working with Kinect thanks to their successful Dance Central series that sees players dancing to songs in front of the camera.
The game was first announced in 2013. Disney approached Harmonix with the idea three years earlier and although the developer was initially hesitant, they agreed to take on the project after hearing the corporations pitch.
Fantasia: Music Evolved sees players creating worlds and controlling elements by moving their hands like a conductor in time with a variety of songs. Unlike previous games from the developer, sessions will not be graded and players will be able to share their mixes after levels are complete with others.
The game faced a somewhat uncertain future last month when Microsoft announced that Kinect would no longer be bundled with the Xbox One from 9 June. Because the title needs players to have a Kinect system there was much speculation that it might affect its release.
Harmonix staff appeared to react angrily to the news, with individuals posting a number of messages on Twitter that referred to the announcement with sarcasm. However the developers later released an official statement saying:
“We believe that tightly-crafted motion games can be great, genre-defining interactive experiences, as we’ve proven with the Dance Central franchise on Kinect for Xbox 360, and we’re eager to prove it again with Disney Fantasia: Music Evolved this fall on both Xbox One and Xbox 360.”