[LDSO] Tron 2.0 Forum

Daddyo wrote:Maybe this is Xistence's chance to take over the Tron gaming reigns!

I worked at the games-division of Disney for a very long time.

Kingdom Hearts (all of them) are done exclusively by Square - with effectively zero creative involvement by Disney.

All of the game from the 16-bit days and earlier were made under a completely different corperat culture.

All of the Pixar games from Nemo through Wall-E were handled by THQ - with Disney only involved as license-management. So any good or bad there can't be laid at Disney's feet.

About 4 years back, I gave this "corperate culture" feedback internally:

"Andy Moony and DCP seem to be doing a good job over at DCP proper. But at DIS, while the executive team gives lip-service to quality product, the product that we actually deliver is sub-standard for our industry, and there is little backing from the executive level either in logisitics or company strategy for the kinds of practices that would make quality products. We need to make fewer but better products - put more time and money and attention into the first in a line of product, and pick development teams that have consistently made 80%+ product in that genre, and then stick with that team for the entire line of product."

" Andy Mooney seems to be doing a good job of communicating the overall DCP strategy. But at DIS no one in the Director level or below has a very good idea of what the DIS company strategy is. There is a great deal of our products canibalizing themselves in the market. Meetings with the executive staff seem to be 90% hindsight finger pointing. There needs to be a clear strat-plan board that makes business sense and that products actually fall into neatly."

I was let go soon after.

I will say that with Split Second, Epic Mickey, and a few others, that Disney is having an up year this year. And good for them - I'm glad things have changed a bit.

• DCP stands for Disney Consumer Products. DCP is a major division within Disney that's responsible for all the merchandise that they sell. The person in charge at DCP is the boss of everyone at Disney Interactive.
• Note how he mentions that earlier games were made under a "different corporate culture". In other words, the only reason earlier games were any good is because Disney didn't get involved in the development.
  
  Even for Tron 2.0, Disney Interactive was mostly "hands-off". It was with Tron 2.0: Killer App that DI became "hands-on" and started to dictate the direction and features of the Xbox version. And we all know how that turned out. Again, with Evolution, they were most definitely "hands-on".
• He felt that Disney was improving. Unfortunately, though, that didn't seem to carry over into Evolution. Did it?