Disney Gaming Benefiting From Drop In Tech Funding
In the past few years, Disney have been taking advantage of tech start-up funding slowing down by allowing them to work with different companies to create more games as game makers including some upcoming games such as a Finding Dory builder game, a mystery solving app for Zootopia and a revamped Club Penguin.
Recently Senior Vice President & General Manager of Disney Mobile Games, Chris Heatherly spoke with the LA Times about the games business at the recent Games Conference in LA.
“As the venture money has dried up and exits have slowed down and valuations have come down, larger game developers that have one or two hits [but not a big stable of them] are now open to work with us in co-development,”
The change in funding has mean that game developers are going to Disney to help fund their games, rather than create their own characters and brands, as using existing characters and a marketing drive from Disney, can help push a game, such as the recent smash hit, Disney Crossy Road, which has seen over 120 million downloads already.
“Disney gets a new source of revenue in exchange for licensing its characters and pitching the game to customers. Partnerships also enable Disney employees to delegate basic tasks and focus on bigger issues, such as devising novel forms of gaming. We don’t do particularly well when the market rewards start-ups to spend a lot of cash to grow top line [sales] and market share without growing profit. When the market starts to mature, that’s where it becomes much more interesting for us. They need someone like a Disney to amplify what they are good at and to bring an audience to their products.”
Disney are also testing apps in countries like Australia and Canada before they launch them everywhere, allowing ways of fine tuning games. Disney has been having some great response to this method as over 11 games in the top 200 most downloaded games are now Disney themed, with characters from Frozen, Inside Out, Star Wars and Marvel all included in their line up.
Disney have been ramping up their gaming division and by teaming up with other developers to produce a quality product and bring in experts from other fields. With the success of titles like Star Wars Battlefront & LEGO Avengers on consoles and mobile games like Crossy Road and Contest of Champions, it does look like we will see many more games coming soon.
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