break-even, and an industry pretty much symbolized by a butt-stomping
plumber is effectively cleaning your clock -- what's a corporate
dinosaur to do?
Easy: If you can't (sufficiently) milk 'em, depose 'em.
The Wall Street Journal reports that's essentially what Disney did
when longtime Pixar partner THQ came pitching license rights to a Toy
Story 3 game tie-in. Thanks but no thanks, said Disney and Pixar,
opting instead to handle creation of the game (due in 2010) in-house.
You've heard plenty recently about how game sales were up 43 percent
in 2007. Weigh that against box office revenues -- up a paltry 4
percent over the same period, and even then by way of ticket price
inflation, not viewer growth. Home video sales -- still bigger bucks
than gaming, but not by much -- were actually down 3.2 percent.
So when the authors of the WSJ piece suggest that "it isn't clear yet
whether the media companies have the stamina to become serious
competitors to heavyweight game publishers," I'd probably swap
"stamina" for "inclination." Companies like Disney have oceans of
stamina for substantial year-over-year revenue growth, and nothing
suggests gaming won't be nailing that metric for years if not decades
to come.
Source: PCWorld