With Thanksgiving weekend approaching, I know many of you will be looking forward to just staying home, sleeping in, and avoiding all the schoolwork. Well, I know many of you, like myself, will be cuddled up at home, looking for new video games to play. Thus, today's blog is based on Disney's Video Games!
Using familiar faces & stories to encourage fans' ongoing support with examples Aladdin, Tangled & Tron
Disney has done it again! With the success of it's already branded characters, Disney relies heavily on it's large existing fan base to bring themselves into the video game industry. Today, Disney has over 100 video games ever published and licensed and continues their success relying on Disney's new television shows, celebrities, attractions, movies, and more. In another words, whatever existing Disney brand exists, keep a look out for a new video game that will come out soon based on it!
Brief History: It began back in 1988 when Disney decided to expand its efforts into the video game industry by creating the Walt Disney Computer Software. This particular gaming unit targeted third party development studios to design games based on pre-existing Disney characters. It was the first attempt from Walt Disney Corp, to focus on the internal development and publishing of video games and computer. However, Walt Disney Computer Software lacked the knowledge between differentiating marketing structures for video games vs. movies, and thus, had little success. Although, Walt Disney Computer Software did find some popularity with video games such as Aladdin (1993) and The Lion King (1993). In 1996, Walt Disney Computer Software was shut down and reorganized as Disney Interactive. Disney Interactive had a specific scope of genre as it focused heavily on educational video games designed primarily for children. In comparison to Walt Disney Computer Software, it found much more success with educational games such as Disney's Animated Storybook: 101 Dalmations (1996) and Disney's Activity Center: Toy Story (1996). Disney Interactive eventually continued to build success with its video games reaching out to gamers of an older generation. Thus, on March 14, 2003, Buena Vista Games was released, which focused on all other content, other than children's video games. Over several years, Buena Vista Games had partnered up with many other existing gaming studios such as Climax Racing, Avalanche Software, and many more. In 2005, Buena Vista Games announces that they will be broadening their video games from children and family games to teens and more core games. It wasn't until 2007, it was renamed once more to what exists today known as, Disney Interactive Studios. As of today, the studio produces video games that are both Disney and non-Disney video games that are published on all platforms worldwide, including North America, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and many more.
Disney's Video Game studios has changed names and logos throughout the years
How successful it really is: One of the tricks that Disney has always been accustomed to was to build on the existing fans of a particular character or familiar image, such as Mickey Mouse, or a specific Disney princess. Thus, with video games, Disney continues it's strategies. Disney focuses many of its video games on preexisting characters so gamers are familiar with the background story and feel somewhat more connected to the players and characters of the game. Although as smart of a marketing strategy it is, as compared to the rest of the Walt Disney Corp. it is easy to say that Disney's focus on its video games has been the least successful. Although, Disney is smart to find a set niche of gamers from all ages, primarily targeting the younger ages, they have discovered that the Walt Disney Corp, has the least success in this area of focus. According to John G. Taylor of Arcadia Investment Corp, "One of the surprises of the last three or four years was how unproductive most of their movie-related titles were... There's got to be a better way to do this." With lack of substantial success, Disney has found it's success more so in online games and mobile games, which I will touch on in a later post. However, Disney still keeps its video game industry alive, because it has still has a set niche of fans who continue to support and buy these products, based on the background and previous success with the movie/character/etc.
Can Disney attract more gamers with its new most anticipated video game, which releases this week on November 18, 2012, Epic Mickey 2: The Power of 2
How technology has aided the survival and success: Disney had accustomed to following the general trends of the technology behind different video game consoles as it has evolved over the years. One of the first gaming consoles available was the Game & Watch (G&W) which was a line of handheld electronic game, created by Nintendo from 1980 to 1991. Some of the first Disney games introduced for G&W included Mickey Mouse and Mickey & Donald. Around 1988, more games were featured from Disney to accommodate for the then popular video game console, Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). Games such as DuckTales (1989) and The Little Mermaid (1991). Again as technology continued to change, so did Disney's video games. Around 1997, with the approach of the Nintendo Game Boy, more games were created such as Mickey's Racing Adventure (1999) and Disney's Beauty & The Beast: A Boardgame Adventure (1999). It wasn't until major releases such as Playstation 2, GameCube, Nintendo DS, Playstation 3 and WII that came out in the 21st century that Disney began to release video games on many consoles at once, instead of focusing on one specific console. One of the most popular games that caught attention from an older crowd was Kingdom Hearts (2002), which was a combination of Disney fans and Final Fantasy fans that ultimately pulled through to its older gamers. It gained huge success through Playstation 2 and Nintendo DS. As of today, it has over five sequels to the game and continues to grab fans from the niche of it's previous games. However, as technology continues to change, it is no different that Disney will continue to follow its gamers to the next generation and continue to bring new animated games to life depending on where technology takes us in the future.
One of Disney's highest grossing video games, Kingdom Hearts
Remember my blogger bugs, with Thanksgiving weekend coming, I hope I've inspired all of you to look into the wide range of Disney's video games and find your favorites to play! As for me, I've got my eyes set on the new Epic Mickey 2: The Power of 2!
GOBBLE, GOBBLE, UNTIL NEXT TIME ! Have a splendid Thanksgiving !
Sources:
http://disney.go.com/disneyinteractivestudios/company.html
http://www.mobygames.com/company/disney-interactive-studios/history
http://www.allgame.com/company.php?id=391
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jan/26/business/la-fi-ct-disney-interactive-20110126
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