14 DAY TRIAL // Although THQ has extended an offer to develop the game Toy Story 3 for Disney, the multimedia giant turned down the offer and decided that the game would be developed by Disney Interactive Studios, its in-house development studio. THQ CEO Brian Farrell declared: "We would have loved to keep the business, but when you see a company like Disney scaling up we weren't surprised when they went internal with it". THQ has developed games based on the last 4 animation movies made by Disney owned Pixar.
Disney Interactive Studios is the game development arm of the Disney corporation and it employs over 800 staff. "Our ambition is not to be the largest videogame publisher, but to be a leading publisher of high-quality games, which we feel we've made great strides in achieving over the last few years," said Graham Hopper, head of the Studios. With the videogame market on the rise, the company is certain to look for ways to profit, especially as revenue from movies is again down for 2007. And the easiest way is to develop and publish games rather than license the rights to third party companies. In the last years, all the major film releases were accompanied by a game, although the quality of the videogames in question remains rather low. There's also a visible trend of turning videogames into movies, but the results, exemplified by movies like Hitman, Doom or the old Wing Commader, are not yet stellar.
Disney certainly has the known and respected intellectual property it needs in order to develop high grossing games. Its animated movies especially are well to be adapted into games. What's not known is if the people at Disney Interactive Studios can create interesting and engaging videogames based on those movies. However, Brian Farell of THQ doubts whether traditional media oriented companies have what it takes to succeed in the world of videogames. He says: "I've seen this before and the jury is still out on it."
At this time, details regarding the game itself are not forthcoming, but we will be sure to bring them to you as soon as they surface.