
Disney stops making video games in house – insiders reveal what went wrong - nkurz
http://www.techinsider.io/inside-disneys-messy-video-game-business-2016-5
======
Animats
Acquiring and trashing companies is seriously annoying. Disney did this to
about a half dozen game companies. Google is doing it to about a half dozen
robotics companies. In both cases, the acquisitions were initially seen as
positive. In both cases, the parent company had no clue what to do with what
they bought.

I have a friend who works at a company recently acquired by Microsoft, a
company whose product was not Microsoft-oriented. I wrote to her "You've been
acquired by the Borg - now what?" She hopes the company doesn't get trashed.

Another case that irks me is QNX, the microkernel OS. They were bought by
Harmon, which is mostly a car stereo company. That didn't work out, and Harmon
sold them to Blackberry. Blackberry has a clue technically, but is stuck with
a business model in decline. Meanwhile, a really good OS is in limbo. Not
dead; many important embedded systems use QNX. The reliability is much better
than either Windows or Linux, partly because the kernel is small. As a result,
it's actually been debugged.

~~~
pinewurst
Disney: this isn't surprising. I don't think people realize how
bureaucratically corporate Disney is, almost a parody at the level of
"Brazil". They are a good employer though if one finds a happy place there
with excellent benefits.

QNX: a lovely embedded and even service OS. I used it for encryption and
stream management in a game-cartridge-over cable-TV headend. They also
included a bag of chocolate chip cookies in the box. :)

Microsoft: I remember the agonizing (and multiply failed) Hotmail transition
from Unix to Windows after the acquisition. I was working for a vendor called
in to assist and the status meetings were a slow motion car wreck.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
> They are a good employer though if one finds a happy place there with
> excellent benefits.

As long as you don't work in IT.

~~~
pinewurst
Not disagreeing - I interviewed for a position there and asked about the
outsourcing effort and results. The senior manager was awfully defensive about
it.

------
wobbleblob
> One of the most common refrains among ex-Disney staffers was that Disney had
> a strong aversion to risk.

Now why does that not surprise me. Disney stopped making art somewhere in the
1940's (fantasia) and started shipping product. I didn't share people's relief
that the force awakens at least didn't suck like the prequels. The writing was
so derivative as to almost make it a remake. Instead of Jar Jar Binks, the
comic relief was Emo-Vader, but the comic relief shouldn't be the best part of
the movie, and I'm not even sure if he was meant to be funny.

~~~
de_Selby
I was very confused by the good reviews too, it was literally the exact same
story as A New Hope.

I don't hold much hope for the next films.

~~~
gambiting
The film had the impossible task of pleasing both old and new viewers of the
franchise. It succeeded immensely in that regard, old viewers could recognize
the nods to the old trilogy, while new viewers were presented with a very well
made film that (in my opinion) surpasses the original trilogy in literally
every way. If I had to rate it I would definitely rate it higher than new
hope.

~~~
wobbleblob
I didn't say it wasn't well made, I didn't like the writing. There were so
many nods to the old trilogy that my neck started to hurt.

Spoiler alert!

Young adventurer on a desert planet unaware of their Jedi powers?

Resourceful, commanding, brutally competent as well as sexy young princess?

Help from a reluctant rogue with his hairy side kick, on the run from crime
lord that he tried to swindle?

A tall masked dark side antagonist, apprentice of a mysterious emperor type
guy?

An evil empire vs a rebel alliance?

Secret plans hidden in robot?

Quest to find hermit Jedi master?

Quest to destroy a planet killing Death Star?

The most original part of the writing was merging the adventurer and the
princess into one character and making the Vader part an annoying teenager.

~~~
gambiting
I agree with all of the above, but I don't see any of that as a problem. I
would not hold "too similar to new hope" as an issue with this film. If
anything, it was a good thing in my opinion.

------
acz
And there you have Ron Gilbert asking Disney to sell him Monkey Island IP
back, to proceed with a sequel:

>Dear @Disney, now that you're not making games, please sell me my Monkey
Island and Mansion Mansion IP. I'll pay real actual money for them.

src:
[https://twitter.com/grumpygamer/status/734843964709175297](https://twitter.com/grumpygamer/status/734843964709175297)

~~~
molmalo
They may give him a license, but Disney is an IP black hole, they wont sell it
back. And considering its very close to Pirates of the Caribbean, there's even
less chance of that happening any time soon.

In my opinion, what Disney should be doing, is contact Ron, and make Guybrush
and LeChuck appear in the next Pirates of the Caribbean movie, to introduce
them to a new generation who does not have any idea of who they are (Guybrush
being a young naive boy again would fit pretty well for this job). After all,
PotC and MI universes are pretty compatible, it should be easy to make it look
like they are both in the same universe/time.

Then, they could either make MI a spin-off (preferably), or make Guybrush be a
new sidekick to Sparrow (but please, dont make him a silly Robin).

And then, give Ron full freedom to work with that IP as he wishes... (and pay
him accordingly, or better, give him a nice % of royalties).

If they don't want to sell the IP, at least, this way they could make some
money with it (instead of letting it rot in a drawer), without risking their
PotC franchise, letting Ron continue the story, and making us fans happy in
the process!!

------
officemonkey
Saddest part of the Disney Infinity debacle is the fans. DI was marketed
strongly to kids based on the success of Star Wars and MCU franchises.
Although game play was lackluster, the target audience (kids 4-8) didn't care.
And the figurines were really very cool.

When they pulled the plug on Disney Infinity, they really sent a pretty clear
"we don't care" to any kid that loved those DI figurines.

You don't want to send a FU to that market segment, because little boys don't
forget.

~~~
dottrap
Sadly, it won't matter. Here's another example of Disney neglecting successful
markets they created. I just re-read this DuckTales 25th Anniversary
Retrospective from a few years ago because Alan Young/Scrooge died the other
day.

Excerpt:

    
    
      But what media company has almost 4 times the market   
      capitalization of CBS and is among the largest media
      conglomerates in the world? That would be Disney of course. 
      And what is Disney doing to celebrate the 25th Anniversary 
      of DuckTales, the most successful syndicated cartoon series 
      in history? Absolutely nothing.
      I'm always quite amazed at Disney's inability to capitalize 
      on their own successful products.
    
    

[http://playcontrol.net/ewing/jibberjabber/ducktales-25th-
ann...](http://playcontrol.net/ewing/jibberjabber/ducktales-25th-
anniversary.html)

~~~
vmarsy
The wiki[1] page says: On February 25, 2015, Disney XD announced it would be
reviving the series for a 2017 premiere.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuckTales](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuckTales)

------
ameen
Out of all the titles listed on there. Split/Second suffered the worst fate.
One of the best arcade racers when it released with an excellent MP (on PC at
least).

If managed properly, it could've ended up as popular as CoD4 or CS. Every
person I know who played it loved it. It could've been the one franchise that
would've unseated NFS as the undisputed champion for arcade racers and put
them on the map for a new multiplayer experience. Instead, it suffered the
worst possible fate for a product of its quality.

------
bitwize
Disney should just let Square Enix handle their gamibg ventures. Somehow they
could turn a 14-year-old girl's crossover fanfic into a phenomenal series and
franchise in its own right (I of course am referring to Kingdom Hearts).

~~~
CJKinni
While Square Enix may tend to make great series, their financial situation
isn't all roses either. The huge production delays on their games out of Japan
have made those projects huge risks. Take a look at the amazing amount of
money they seem to be putting into the launch of the new Final Fantasy game to
try and recoup costs.

Their subsidiaries (eg IO Interactive and, Edios Montreal, and Square Enix
Montreal) seem to be doing better overall.

------
cwilkes
While I think it is a good idea for a company to stick to their knitting
(making movies and such, not video games) I'm not sure what studio will want
to work with them when Disney holds all the IP to the characters.

Say a game is a hit and makes the game studio a lot of money. Disney's going
to see that and demand more for licensing fees. What is the studio going to
say? No? It isn't like the studio can start releasing games with those
characters without Disney's blessing.

Or maybe it will work, who knows. It will be interesting to watch.

~~~
csydas
I'd be curious to see what deals Disney had worked out for its NES era games
made by Capcom. While I remember them fondly, I guess I don't really know if
they were commercially successful at the time or not.

If it was successful, then it just seems natural that they'd continue to
license the IP out to let those who do know games do their thing with
franchises, and honestly the in-house production of games for Disney always
seemed off.

~~~
dottrap
They were commercially successful.

[http://www.ign.com/articles/2008/05/23/capcom-releases-
lifet...](http://www.ign.com/articles/2008/05/23/capcom-releases-lifetime-
sales-numbers)

(NES) DuckTales outsold all their (NES) Mega Man's. It's an interesting
comparison because DuckTales shares a lot of similarities with Mega Man.

Disney franchise sales for them ranks 4 in total which is high, but still
misleading because Resident Evil is ranks 1 and they weren't making Disney
games in that era where more people bought video games. I speculate the Disney
number would be much bigger if they did.

------
mullingitover
The interactive division has burned through billions and billions of dollars
since it was founded in the late 90s. It's not a big surprise that they would
eventually go with a strategy of 'figure out what you're bad at, and stop
doing that.' I was there from 2006 to 2015 and the layoffs were constant.
Their IP is valuable but they can't execute efficiently.

------
ep103
The same company that fired all their IT people, after forcing them to train
their offshore replacements, has a hard time turning a profit on quality
software? Color me flabbergasted.

------
cableshaft
I interviewed at Wideload in downtown Chicago when they were owned by Disney
and working on that Marvel mobile game. They were located in a floor of a
building that kind of looked like a huge studio apartment. The people there
were nice and it looked like a fun place to work. I only went with another
company because they gave me an offer first.

But even though the company I went with instead proceeded to have a super
rough year of losing multiple clients that ultimately resulted in my getting
laid off, Disney had shuttered Wideload several months before that. It didn't
make any sense to me, since these people were clearly talented (check out
Guilty Party on the Wii, it's excellent).

And then I saw them shut down studio after studio, and it just makes them look
inept in the game space, to me. Then another Disney company contacted me last
year asking me to move across the country so I could work on their mobile park
app. Couldn't really trust them anymore, so I passed.

