DISNEY BOOSTING ITS GAME COMPANY BUYS DEVELOPER, FORMS STUDIO.Byline: Brent Hopkins Staff Writer GLENDALE - The Walt Disney Noun 1. Walt Disney - United States film maker who pioneered animated cartoons and created such characters as Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck; founded Disneyland (1901-1966) Disney, Walter Elias Disney Co. muscled up its video game arm, announcing Tuesday that it bought a developer and has formed its own studio. Disney's Buena Vista Games division purchased its Salt Lake City-based partner Avalanche Software Avalanche Software is a video game developer studio, founded in October 1995 by four lead programmers from Sculptured Software. The company has developed for every console platform since the Sega Genesis and SNES days and has grown to a staff of over 100 since its inception. , paying an undisclosed sum for the developer. The two had explored working together several times in previous years and decided to build on the relationship fostered by the November adaptation of the film ``Chicken Little'' into video game form. Prior to agreeing to the sale, Avalanche executives gathered the staff together and took a vote on whether to join with Disney. An overwhelming majority voted in favor of the union, attracted by the opportunity to develop games based on Disney's family fare. ``We're guys with young kids,'' said John Blackburn John Blackburn could be:
The developer will remain in Utah, where Blackburn expects to hire on more employees to supplement his current staff of 115. As they handle titles aimed at younger players, Disney's newly formed Canadian operations will work on action-adventure games for the teen and hard-core gamer demographics. In the past, much of Disney's fare was limited to PC-based titles but the expansions give it greater coverage in game consoles. The Vancouver-based studio, which will be named at next month's E3 trade show in Los Angeles Los Angeles (lôs ăn`jələs, lŏs, ăn`jəlēz'), city (1990 pop. 3,485,398), seat of Los Angeles co., S Calif.; inc. 1850. , currently has 20 employees and should expand to between 60 and 100 by year's end. With the two developers hitting both ends of the more than $20 million annual international market, Disney plans to make itself a much more visible player. ``It's a natural evolution of our business,'' said Angela Emery emery: see corundum. emery Granular rock consisting of a mixture of the mineral corundum (aluminum oxide, Al2O3) and iron oxides such as magnetite (Fe3O4) or hematite (Fe2O3). , Buena Vista Games' director of communications Director of Communications is a position in the private and public sectors. The Director of Communications is responsible for managing and directing an organization's internal and external communications. . ``We're migrating from being PC and kid-centric to a more broad portfolio. We'll always have the Disney sensibility, but we want more growth. There's a lot of potential in that arena.'' Disney's stock closed up 21 cents at $27.15 on Tuesday. Brent Hopkins, (818) 713-3738 brent.hopkins(at)dailynews.com |
|
||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion