In its modern form, Disney is not just a movie company. It does everything. With multiple streaming services, a huge theme park empire, countless movie studios, Disney has so much at its disposal that it comes under constant controversy and scrutiny over whether or not to break laws related to US monopolies. But one area in which Disney isn’t so investing is video games. You will see Disney characters popping up in licensed video games, namely the Kingdom Hearts franchise – but the days when Disney had its own video game company are long gone. Former Disney CEOs love Bob Iger have even been open about Disney’s inability to get into the video game space. But why? What has kept Disney from getting into this medium as its reach expands to so many different places?
Disney’s forays into gaming started with a company called Walt Disney Computer Software Inc. In 1993, The Los Angeles Times did an analysis of the company noting how little impact this division had on the Disney empire. While Disney’s animation division was in the midst of one of its greatest peaks in 1993, Walt Disney Computer Software Inc., which had just 46 employees at the time, barely left a ripple. Key figures in the company noted that the aspirations of this outfit were to emphasize placing recognizable characters in video games rather than pioneer new technology, while outside critics were disappointed with the quality of video games released to date. with the Disney label on it.
Disney’s demise of video games was all about timing
A major problem with the division was seen as its heavy reliance on making video games for several Disney movies, but not releasing those titles when the movies were popular. A good example of this was how a video game based on aladdin was noted in the article as an upcoming title for Walt Disney Computer Software Inc… but the film had been released six months before the piece was published. Still, even at this difficult stage, the Mouse House had released its fair share of critically acclaimed and even highly lucrative games, including Disney’s Stunt Island and a Who framed Roger Rabbit? game. Disney was able to release successful video games…the conditions just had to be just right.
Walt Disney Computer Software Inc. became Disney Interactive
In December 1994, the company was renamed the less cumbersome Disney Interactive. Initially, there were long-term plans for the new form of Disney Interactive to usher in an era where Disney produced in-house video games that dominated the world. Some of the subsequent titles managed to take off thanks to their association with beloved brands such as Toy Story or The lionking, but these ambitions were short-lived. Disney got out of the internal video game business in April 1997 (not for the last time). The change was largely due to new video game technologies on the way. Instead of spending large sums of money to overhaul Disney Interactive so that it could create in-house games that fit all the new technology, Disney reduced its losses and decided to license its various characters and brands exclusively to third-party developers. .
It is doubtful whether Disney would have gone down this road if in-house video games had become a huge business for the Mouse House or if they had created something very popular in the game scene of the 1990s: an 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 bonded with players and offered adventures that you couldn’t get on any other medium. Because Disney saw games only as a way to extend the shelf life and viability of movies and TV shows, Disney Interactive has never produced the kind of exciting original character that warrants spending longer indoors gaming.
Bob Iger Made Major Changes to Disney
A decade passes. Time goes on. Just as the sun rises and sets, so does a new regime come to power at Disney. The Bob Iger Disney’s era brought many profound changes to the company. Disney Interactive and its short-lived successor Buena Vista Games were no more. Disney Interactive Studios would now be the umbrella label for all games published by Disney. While Disney would still license characters to outside game companies, the focus was now more on creating more and more projects in-house. Acquiring several video game developers was key to this task. For example, Avalanche Software was bought in 2005 and the company was tasked with making games such as: Bolt and Toy Story 3. Propaganda Games have been developed in the meantime Tron: Evolution and the unreleased Pirates of the Caribbean: Armada of the Damned for disney.
Picking up these companies to let them create new projects for Disney was in line with Bob Iger’s general approach to entertainment in his tenure as the company’s leader, as evidenced by his acquisitions of Pixar, Marvel, and Lucasfilm. However, the new version from Disney Interactive didn’t quite get off the ground as it should. For starters, in the late 2000s and early 2010s, Disney didn’t have a huge amount of new hit movies that it could turn into major video games. The studio was not devoid of hits, but projects like G-force or Bedtime stories weren’t going to inspire hit Playstation 3 titles. Disney Animation would only get its mojo back in full confused in 2010 and Disney was able to release new Marvel movies was years away. Again, relying so hard on movie tie-in games hurt Disney Interactive.
Video game franchises struggled to get off the ground
Perhaps even more deadly were attempts to get video game franchises off the ground. Turok was a hit, but it never came to a sequel. Ultimate Bandan attempt to monetize the Guitar Hero and Rock band craze of the late 2000s, quickly fading into obscurity. An attempt to relaunch Mickey Mouse as a modernized video game hero in Epic Mickey also failed to grab gamers. It was over a decade ago, but Disney Interactive Studios still struggled to produce the kind of standalone hits that are typical of a video game company. The internal release plan desperately needed an original impactful concept to give it an extra boost of life. This became even more important as the presence of video games declined drastically by the beginning of 2010. Disney had to find another route to produce successful video games and quickly.
In the early 2010s, there was one major turnaround from Disney Interaction that had the potential to change the approach to in-house gaming forever: Disney Infinity. Building on the popularity of Skylanders, Disney Infinity combined action figures with video games and allowed players to combine a whole host of different Disney characters (from Jack Sparrow to Olaf the snowman) into one game. It was an enticing concept, and unlike many other high-profile Disney Interactive projects, this one took off. Almost six months after its launch, news broke that the Disney Infinity game (complete with three starter action figures) had sold over three million copies.
With the next two years delivering new versions of Disney Infinity that added marvel superheroes and several Star Wars characters in the mix, it seemed like this franchise could go on forever. However, by the summer of 2015, dark clouds were forming over the series that was to act as Disney Interactive’s savior. Sales of the game and accompanying figures had slowed considerably at this point. Disney Interactive as a whole had a tough quarter in mid-2015, which the company attributes to adjustments in what kinds of games people played on consoles. Once again, we see a well-known issue return to hurt Disney’s video game ambitions. As in the late 1990s, changes in gaming confused Disney rather than being seen as an opportunity for the company to grow and change.
The writing was on the wall
The writing was already on the wall that Disney Interactive’s future became bleak in early 2014 when the division laid off 700 people. The outlook turned even bleaker with concurrent news in May 2016 that: Disney Infinity would close and that Disney Interactive would exit its internal video game business. The news made sense on several fronts, including how the latest big Disney asset, Star Wars, had previously signed a deal in 2013 to let EA Games develop new video games in the franchise. Disney Interactive couldn’t even rely on newly acquired Disney properties to boost profits, among a myriad of other problems.
Disney’s continued failures in the world of in-house video game titles were so pronounced that former CEO Bob Iger even openly admitted in February 2019 that the company just wasn’t particularly good at this area. It’s not hard to see why. Between an over-reliance on leaning on movie tie-in games, a lack of must-have original game characters, and most importantly an inability to adapt to the changing game world, Disney’s time in the internal video game business more misses than wins.
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