I think it boils down to, they're a company that is very good at making games. From a casual outside observer's point of view, they seemed to think they could jump straight into being very good at animation and merchandising. They made, what, 30 or 40 games before angry birds was a hit? They didn't seem to have the same level of commitment to 30 or 40 iterations of animation, or merchandising.
It's fine to expand into new markets, companies do it all the time. You probably don't want to bet the farm on something you're not very very good at though, unless it's threatening your survival. Western union moving from the telegraph to money transfer is a pretty iconic example.
Compare to Mojang (survivor bias warning...) they're still pretty small. I haven't played it, but Scrolls is supposed to be really fun. Haven't heard anything bad about Cobalt either. I was very excited for x10k or whatever the space programming game was. They did a ton of merchandising, but they didn't do it in house (as far as i can tell). They took the check from lego and let the big toy maker do their thing.
Do what you think is best, but even if there's some non-game thing that makes sense, ask yourself if you really want to go head to head with Hasbro or Pixar. Really understand what you're getting yourself into.
I think it boils down to, they're a company that is very good at making games. From a casual outside observer's point of view, they seemed to think they could jump straight into being very good at animation and merchandising. They made, what, 30 or 40 games before angry birds was a hit? They didn't seem to have the same level of commitment to 30 or 40 iterations of animation, or merchandising.
It's fine to expand into new markets, companies do it all the time. You probably don't want to bet the farm on something you're not very very good at though, unless it's threatening your survival. Western union moving from the telegraph to money transfer is a pretty iconic example.
Compare to Mojang (survivor bias warning...) they're still pretty small. I haven't played it, but Scrolls is supposed to be really fun. Haven't heard anything bad about Cobalt either. I was very excited for x10k or whatever the space programming game was. They did a ton of merchandising, but they didn't do it in house (as far as i can tell). They took the check from lego and let the big toy maker do their thing.
Do what you think is best, but even if there's some non-game thing that makes sense, ask yourself if you really want to go head to head with Hasbro or Pixar. Really understand what you're getting yourself into.