Acquiring and trashing companies is seriously annoying. Disney did this to about a half dozen game companies. Google is doing it to about a half dozen robotics companies. In both cases, the acquisitions were initially seen as positive. In both cases, the parent company had no clue what to do with what they bought.
I have a friend who works at a company recently acquired by Microsoft, a company whose product was not Microsoft-oriented. I wrote to her "You've been acquired by the Borg - now what?" She hopes the company doesn't get trashed.
Another case that irks me is QNX, the microkernel OS. They were bought by Harmon, which is mostly a car stereo company. That didn't work out, and Harmon sold them to Blackberry. Blackberry has a clue technically, but is stuck with a business model in decline. Meanwhile, a really good OS is in limbo. Not dead; many important embedded systems use QNX. The reliability is much better than either Windows or Linux, partly because the kernel is small. As a result, it's actually been debugged.
They always tell you that nothing will change and this isn't really a lie exactly, as the person who says it genuinely believes it. But in a year's time that person has moved on, been promoted, busy with another acquisition, whatever, and now you report to an established and powerful manager in the old company, who doesn't see why you are special or should be treated differently than his or her existing staff. In fact they probably actively resent you; the company buying you at all they take as a signal that existing staff weren't "good enough". At that point, you are screwed.
>But in a year's time that person has moved on, been promoted, busy with another acquisition, whatever, and now you report to an established and powerful manager in the old company, who doesn't see why you are special or should be treated differently than his or her existing staff. In fact they probably actively resent you; the company buying you at all they take as a signal that existing staff weren't "good enough".
Reading that gave me a since of deja vu. I'm going through exactly what you describe, but it only took 6 months, not a year, to get to this point. It seems like the people running the acquisition actively want to destroy the business they've acquired by making us fit into their 'box' while missing the bigger picture.
Disney: this isn't surprising. I don't think people realize how bureaucratically corporate Disney is, almost a parody at the level of "Brazil". They are a good employer though if one finds a happy place there with excellent benefits.
QNX: a lovely embedded and even service OS. I used it for encryption and stream management in a game-cartridge-over cable-TV headend. They also included a bag of chocolate chip cookies in the box. :)
Microsoft: I remember the agonizing (and multiply failed) Hotmail transition from Unix to Windows after the acquisition. I was working for a vendor called in to assist and the status meetings were a slow motion car wreck.
Not disagreeing - I interviewed for a position there and asked about the outsourcing effort and results. The senior manager was awfully defensive about it.
Interesting. Even before that, you could run IOS XR with a Linux-based emulator called EnXR. It's useful for testing because you don't need to load the image onto a real router.
So many times a company isn't good at something, buys someone smaller and faster that is, and then imposes their way of doing things on the acquisition killing it.
> One of the most common refrains among ex-Disney staffers was that Disney had a strong aversion to risk.
Now why does that not surprise me. Disney stopped making art somewhere in the 1940's (fantasia) and started shipping product. I didn't share people's relief that the force awakens at least didn't suck like the prequels. The writing was so derivative as to almost make it a remake. Instead of Jar Jar Binks, the comic relief was Emo-Vader, but the comic relief shouldn't be the best part of the movie, and I'm not even sure if he was meant to be funny.
Sorry, unless you're an angsty teen, you weren't meant to relate to emo-vader, er, Kylo Ren. You were meant to relate to Han Solo. But you'd only relate if you're a parent. If not, then I guess there's always Traitor-guy. Yes the new episode is derivative. That's because it is how epics are told. It will diverge on the next two episodes from the original trilogy, unless Disney gets scared... that would be a huge disappointment...
Wildly overrated movie. I tried rewatching it on a plane a couple weeks ago, and it really doesn't stand up to repeat viewings. Apparently there is a novelization that patches up all the many, many plot points that were unexplained or made no sense in the movie script, but the movie is really just another lazy JJ Abrams production. Then you notice how, like Jurassic World, nearly every scene is a blatant callback to something from the original film.
Unfortunately, you could package two hours of film of an actual gold-plated turd, and it would make a billion dollars if it had the Star Wars name on it.
The film had the impossible task of pleasing both old and new viewers of the franchise. It succeeded immensely in that regard, old viewers could recognize the nods to the old trilogy, while new viewers were presented with a very well made film that (in my opinion) surpasses the original trilogy in literally every way. If I had to rate it I would definitely rate it higher than new hope.
I agree with all of the above, but I don't see any of that as a problem. I would not hold "too similar to new hope" as an issue with this film. If anything, it was a good thing in my opinion.
I love the original trilogy. I really do, my nostalgia towards it is very strong. But if you take off the nostalgia-tinted glasses for a second, you will see that original trilogy(ROTJ especially) has very poor dialogue, the filming and pacing is passable. ESB is the best of the three, but Force Awakens is easily on par with that film, and definitely better than ewok-filled ROTJ.
Rogue One looks somewhat promising - but it is going in a little bit different direction as a stand-alone spinoff, not having to carry the weight of the franchise.
Although I still think any movie called Rogue One should be about Rogue Squadron and Wedge Antilles... But then again, I really fell in love with Star Wars reading the X-Wing novel series.
Imo it is not very surprising, classical hype machine thing to the t. Even if we don't need to be told what to like, it is easier to play along and pretend we enjoyed it, even convince ourselves it was good, than admitting we were lead on and it is pretty bland. Of course, Occam is screaming every time a big budget IP blockbuster is coming, we just prefer not to pay attention. Without hindsight I might add.
The next films will play out the same I have no doubts about them. Emperor's new clothes and all that. Not disrespecting anyone who will genuinely like them of course.
True, but you are claiming that people are pretending to like TFA, and presumably you don't think people are pretending to like the prequels. It's rare to hear anything good about the prequels.
I mean the skewing effect of a cult following on the perception of the movie's qualities is more apparent here. I believe when someone is a fan they is already invested and hence incentivized to like/defend a movie/brand/franchise. Which is true for the prequels too btw. However TFA being merely a remake makes it objectively inferior imo, as I think people rate original artistic works higher (at least I do). A fact, which is not really reflected nor in its commercial, neither in its critical success.
All that said, I might be just arguing about taste and trying to rationalizing my dislike for TFA.
It sounds like you're saying the effect is more apparent because TFA is bad. But the effect you claim is that people pretend (to themselves or others) to like works that have a brand or franchise or cult following behind them. And you admit that the prequels have that too.
But then we would expect people to either like or pretend to like the prequels. And we don't see that. The prequels are widely disdained. And you haven't explained why the prequels don't get the same pretense as TFA.
They may give him a license, but Disney is an IP black hole, they wont sell it back. And considering its very close to Pirates of the Caribbean, there's even less chance of that happening any time soon.
In my opinion, what Disney should be doing, is contact Ron, and make Guybrush and LeChuck appear in the next Pirates of the Caribbean movie, to introduce them to a new generation who does not have any idea of who they are (Guybrush being a young naive boy again would fit pretty well for this job). After all, PotC and MI universes are pretty compatible, it should be easy to make it look like they are both in the same universe/time.
Then, they could either make MI a spin-off (preferably), or make Guybrush be a new sidekick to Sparrow (but please, dont make him a silly Robin).
And then, give Ron full freedom to work with that IP as he wishes... (and pay him accordingly, or better, give him a nice % of royalties).
If they don't want to sell the IP, at least, this way they could make some money with it (instead of letting it rot in a drawer), without risking their PotC franchise, letting Ron continue the story, and making us fans happy in the process!!
Saddest part of the Disney Infinity debacle is the fans. DI was marketed strongly to kids based on the success of Star Wars and MCU franchises. Although game play was lackluster, the target audience (kids 4-8) didn't care. And the figurines were really very cool.
When they pulled the plug on Disney Infinity, they really sent a pretty clear "we don't care" to any kid that loved those DI figurines.
You don't want to send a FU to that market segment, because little boys don't forget.
Sadly, it won't matter. Here's another example of Disney neglecting successful markets they created. I just re-read this DuckTales 25th Anniversary Retrospective from a few years ago because Alan Young/Scrooge died the other day.
Excerpt:
But what media company has almost 4 times the market
capitalization of CBS and is among the largest media
conglomerates in the world? That would be Disney of course.
And what is Disney doing to celebrate the 25th Anniversary
of DuckTales, the most successful syndicated cartoon series
in history? Absolutely nothing.
I'm always quite amazed at Disney's inability to capitalize
on their own successful products.
Out of all the titles listed on there. Split/Second suffered the worst fate. One of the best arcade racers when it released with an excellent MP (on PC at least).
If managed properly, it could've ended up as popular as CoD4 or CS. Every person I know who played it loved it. It could've been the one franchise that would've unseated NFS as the undisputed champion for arcade racers and put them on the map for a new multiplayer experience. Instead, it suffered the worst possible fate for a product of its quality.
Disney should just let Square Enix handle their gamibg ventures. Somehow they could turn a 14-year-old girl's crossover fanfic into a phenomenal series and franchise in its own right (I of course am referring to Kingdom Hearts).
While Square Enix may tend to make great series, their financial situation isn't all roses either. The huge production delays on their games out of Japan have made those projects huge risks. Take a look at the amazing amount of money they seem to be putting into the launch of the new Final Fantasy game to try and recoup costs.
Their subsidiaries (eg IO Interactive and, Edios Montreal, and Square Enix Montreal) seem to be doing better overall.
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.
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.
(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?
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).
The interactive division has burned through billions and billions of dollars since it was founded in the late 90s. It's not a big surprise that they would eventually go with a strategy of 'figure out what you're bad at, and stop doing that.' I was there from 2006 to 2015 and the layoffs were constant. Their IP is valuable but they can't execute efficiently.
The same company that fired all their IT people, after forcing them to train their offshore replacements, has a hard time turning a profit on quality software? Color me flabbergasted.
I interviewed at Wideload in downtown Chicago when they were owned by Disney and working on that Marvel mobile game. They were located in a floor of a building that kind of looked like a huge studio apartment. The people there were nice and it looked like a fun place to work. I only went with another company because they gave me an offer first.
But even though the company I went with instead proceeded to have a super rough year of losing multiple clients that ultimately resulted in my getting laid off, Disney had shuttered Wideload several months before that. It didn't make any sense to me, since these people were clearly talented (check out Guilty Party on the Wii, it's excellent).
And then I saw them shut down studio after studio, and it just makes them look inept in the game space, to me. Then another Disney company contacted me last year asking me to move across the country so I could work on their mobile park app. Couldn't really trust them anymore, so I passed.
I have a friend who works at a company recently acquired by Microsoft, a company whose product was not Microsoft-oriented. I wrote to her "You've been acquired by the Borg - now what?" She hopes the company doesn't get trashed.
Another case that irks me is QNX, the microkernel OS. They were bought by Harmon, which is mostly a car stereo company. That didn't work out, and Harmon sold them to Blackberry. Blackberry has a clue technically, but is stuck with a business model in decline. Meanwhile, a really good OS is in limbo. Not dead; many important embedded systems use QNX. The reliability is much better than either Windows or Linux, partly because the kernel is small. As a result, it's actually been debugged.