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Comment by cwilkes | Hacker News Reader

While I think it is a good idea for a company to stick to their knitting (making movies and such, not video games) I'm not sure what studio will want to work with them when Disney holds all the IP to the characters.

Say a game is a hit and makes the game studio a lot of money. Disney's going to see that and demand more for licensing fees. What is the studio going to say? No? It isn't like the studio can start releasing games with those characters without Disney's blessing.

Or maybe it will work, who knows. It will be interesting to watch.

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I'd be curious to see what deals Disney had worked out for its NES era games made by Capcom. While I remember them fondly, I guess I don't really know if they were commercially successful at the time or not.

If it was successful, then it just seems natural that they'd continue to license the IP out to let those who do know games do their thing with franchises, and honestly the in-house production of games for Disney always seemed off.

They were commercially successful.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2008/05/23/capcom-releases-lifet...

(NES) DuckTales outsold all their (NES) Mega Man's. It's an interesting comparison because DuckTales shares a lot of similarities with Mega Man.

Disney franchise sales for them ranks 4 in total which is high, but still misleading because Resident Evil is ranks 1 and they weren't making Disney games in that era where more people bought video games. I speculate the Disney number would be much bigger if they did.

This is the exact model that LucasArts had. If you listen to stories from the original LucasArts crew, like David B. Fox, they tell stories that they were not allowed to make Star Wars games (originally to their disappointment) because George Lucas knew there was always somebody else willing to pay him gobs of money for the permission to make a Star Wars game. They take all the risk, and he makes money.

So this model is proven. Despite the hypothetical risk to not owning the IP, there was always somebody willing to pay and take the gamble.

Studios will simply negotiate exclusive rights I guess. You, and no one else, get to make Star Wars games for the next decade. Quality will probably go to shit as a result, but who cares about that?

Their videogame deal with Lego seems to be working out OK. And they've got loads of experience licensing out their IP for toys etc.

Lego is likely one of the few companies with sufficient clout and experience to actually work with Disney on videogames. Not only does Lego possess a valuable product that other companies can use as promotion material, but they also possess the experience of developing videogames which use other companies' IP (or at least, the experience to mediate between whatever company they contract to develop the game and the company possessing the IP).

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