In its modern form, Disney is not just a film company. He does everything. With multiple streaming services, a sprawling theme park empire, countless movie studios, Disney has so much at its disposal that it’s constantly arguing and checking to see if it’s violated US monopoly laws. But there’s one area that Disney isn’t investing as much in, and that’s video games. You will see how Disney characters appear in licensed video games, namely in Kingdom Hearts franchise, but the days of Disney having its own video game company are long gone. Former Disney executives love Bob Iger even talked openly about Disney’s inability to break into the video game market. But why? What has kept Disney from moving into this medium when its reach expands to so many different locations?
Disney’s foray into games began with a company called Walt Disney Computer Software Inc. By 1993, The Los Angeles Times did an analysis of the company, noting how little influence the division had left on the Disney empire. While Disney’s animation division was in the middle of one of its greatest peaks by 1993, Walt Disney Computer Software Inc., which had just 46 employees at the time, left little to no trace. Key people within the company noted that the division’s ambition was to place an emphasis on adding recognizable characters to video games rather than introducing new technology, while outside critics were disappointed with the quality of the video games released so far with the Disney label.
The fall of Disney video games was due to time
The division’s key problem was considered to be its heavy reliance on making video games for various Disney films, but its inability to release those games when the films were popular. A good example of this was how a video game based on Aladdin was noted in the article as a promising title for Walt Disney Computer Software Inc… but the movie had already been released six months before the article was published. Nevertheless, even at this difficult stage, Mouse House has released its share of famous and even very profitable games, including Disney Trick Island and Who Framed Roger Rabbit? the game. Disney was capable of producing successful video games… it just had to be the right conditions.
Walt Disney Computer Software Inc. became Disney Interactive
In December 1994, the company was renamed to the less verbose Disney Interactive. Initially, there were long-term plans for a new form of Disney Interactive to usher in an era of in-house production of Disney video games that dominated the world. Some of the games that followed succeeded because of their association with beloved brands such as toy story or The Lion Kingbut these ambitions were short-lived. Disney exited its own video game business (not for the last time) in April 1997. This change was largely due to the emergence of new video game technologies on the horizon. Instead of spending large sums of money to overhaul Disney Interactive so that it could make its own games that would keep up with all the new technology, Disney cut its losses and decided to license its various characters and brands exclusively to third-party developers.
It’s unlikely Disney would have gone down this path if their own video games had become a mass business for Mouse House, or if they had created something very popular in the 1990s gaming scene: the exclusive video game mascot character. In this era, everything from Sonic the Hedgehog to Crash Bandicoot to Gex the Gecko managed to leave a mark on gamers. These characters created a connection with the players and offered adventures that you couldn’t get in any other environment. Because Disney only saw games as a way to extend the shelf life and brand viability of movies and TV shows, Disney Interactive never created such an exciting original character that could justify keeping their own games for longer.
Bob Iger brought sweeping changes to Disney
A decade passes. Time runs. As the sun rises and sets, a new regime comes into power at Disney. Bob Iger The Disney era brought many radical changes to the company. Disney Interactive and its short-lived successor Buena Vista Games no longer existed. Disney Interactive Studios will now be the umbrella label for all games published by Disney. While Disney still licensed characters to third party game companies, there was now more emphasis on creating more and more of their own projects. The key to this challenge was the acquisition of various video game developers. For example, Avalanche Software was bought in 2005 and tasked with making games like Bolt as well as Toy Story 3. Propaganda games meanwhile evolved Tron: Evolution and unreleased Pirates of the Caribbean: Armada of the Damned for Disney.
The choice of these companies to create new projects for Disney was consistent with Bob Iger’s overall approach to entertainment during his tenure as the head of this corporation, as evidenced by his purchases of Pixar, Marvel and Lucasfilm. However, the new version of Disney Interactive did not become as popular as it should have been. First, in the late 2000s and early 2010s, Disney didn’t have a huge amount of new hit films that could be turned into big video games. The studio was not devoid of hits, but projects such as G-force or Bedtime stories weren’t going to inspire hits for the Playstation 3. Disney Animation won’t regain its full charm until confused in 2010, and the release of new Marvel films was still many years away. Once again, this heavy reliance on movie-related games has hurt Disney Interactive.
Video game franchises struggled to get off the ground
Perhaps more fatally, attempts to launch video game franchises failed. Turk was a hit, but it didn’t get a sequel. Absolute grouptrying to make money guitar hero as well as Rock band the craze of the late 2000s quickly faded into obscurity. An attempt to relaunch Mickey Mouse as a modernized video game hero in epic mickey also failed to capture gamers. It’s been over a decade now, but Disney Interactive Studios has still struggled to produce individual hits that are typical of a video game company. His internal release plan was in desperate need of an original, impressive concept that would give him an extra boost of life. This has become even more important as the presence of video games for films has drastically declined by the early 2010s. Disney needed to find another way to produce popular video games, and quickly.
In the early 2010s, Disney Interaction experienced one major leap that could change the company’s approach to in-house games forever: Disney Infinity. Building on popularity Skylanders, Disney Infinity combined action figures with video games and allowed players to combine many different Disney characters (from Jack Sparrow to Olaf the snowman) in one game. It was an enticing concept, and unlike many of Disney Interactive’s other high-profile titles, this one succeeded. Almost six months after its launch, it became known that Disney Infinity the game (complete with three starter figures) has sold over three million copies.
New versions will be delivered over the next two years Disney Infinity who added Marvel superheroes and various star Wars characters, it felt like this franchise could go on forever. However, by the summer of 2015, clouds were gathering over the series, which was supposed to be the savior of Disney Interactive. By this point, sales of the game and its various metrics had slowed significantly. Disney Interactive as a whole had a rough quarter in mid-2015, which is due to changes in what games people play on consoles. Once again, we see a familiar problem returning to hurt Disney’s video game ambitions. As in the late 1990s, changes in games turned Disney on its head rather than being seen as an opportunity for the company to grow and change.
The writing was on the wall
In early 2014, when the division laid off 700 people, it was already written that the future of Disney Interactive was becoming cloudy. The outlook became even bleaker after news broke simultaneously in May 2016 that Disney Infinity will close and Disney Interactive will exit its own video game business. The news did make sense on several fronts, including that Disney’s newest major acquisition, star Wars, previously struck a deal in 2013 to have EA Games develop new video games in the franchise. Disney Interactive couldn’t even turn to newly acquired Disney properties to increase profits, in addition to countless other problems.
Disney’s continued failure in the world of its own video games has been so obvious that former CEO Bob Iger even openly admitted in February 2019 that the company simply isn’t particularly good at this area. It’s not hard to see why. Due to an over-reliance on movie-related games, a lack of mandatory original playable characters, and especially an inability to adapt to the changing gaming world, Disney has had more misses than wins in its own video game business.
Source: Collider
