Expect More Than Just Anaglyph 3D Games from Disney, Key Executive Says

Stereoscopic 3D is “an interesting element” for games, and the technology will eventually be used in a wide variety of titles; it’s just going to “take a while” to get to that point, Disney Interactive Media Group President Stephen Wadsworth said after his keynote. “The key issue is the installed base of TV sets that are 3D-capable” is small -- “they're just not there right now,” said Hopper. Widespread use of stereoscopic 3D in the home “is coming, but it’s a little bit further out than I think many people would like it to be,” he said. Disney used anaglyph in its initial 3D games because those glasses can be used on any TV, he said.

"The last thing you want … is something that will get in the way of the game-playing experience, and without real high brightness and the right kind of definition it can,” said Wadsworth. The keys are “getting better hardware in the home” to support 3D and giving the consumer the choice” of whether they want to play a game in 3D or not, he said. Consumers who bought Disney’s first stereoscopic 3D games were able to select whether they wanted to play the games in 3D or not, he said.

Consumers have shown they're “willing to put the glasses on” to watch content such as the movie Avatar, Hopper said. But “for general television watching I'm not so sure” they would do that, except for probably a sports event, he said. Until glasses-free 3D solutions become viable for the home market, consumers will accept the glasses, he said, but predicted that most consumers won’t buy TVs just to get 3D capability. “People will get” 3D “when they're buying new sets … and I think they'll like it,” he said. “All our research shows that people who love entertainment, people who love Disney, also love technology,” he said, calling that another reason for Disney to support 3D games. While the target audience for most Disney content is children, he said “their parents” are among the early supporters of new technology including Blu-ray.

It’s “too early to tell” if there will come a time when every game will be released in stereoscopic 3D, or just certain types of games, Hopper said. “The technology has got to be made simple,” so consumers can just “put a game in, play it” and get it to work correctly based on the kind of TV they have, he said. The new 3D-capable TVs that will start shipping this year “will help,” along with the arrival of standards “that will make it easier to create content for it,” he said. A Blu-ray 3D specification was recently finalized.

The Disney executives declined to say if the company is working on games for Microsoft’s “Project Natal” motion control system for the Xbox 360 and Sony’s new PS3 control system, launching later this year. “We talk to Microsoft all the time, and to Sony,” but there’s “nothing we want to announce at this time,” Hopper said.

The company will soon release Epic Mickey for the Wii. Asked why it decided to only offer the game on Nintendo’s console when Natal will offer gestural interface and the 360 supports HD, unlike the Wii, Hopper said, Disney started development on the game three years ago, long before Microsoft unveiled Natal. “If we had started it six months ago,” it might have made a different decision, he said.

Apple’s new iPad, meanwhile, is “very cool” and offers a “very compelling opportunity for us,” Wadsworth said. The company will “certainly have products on it, and we're working on it now,” he said.

Disney is “looking to broaden our audience” for games, but will be “smart and selective” when deciding what games to release for each platform, Wadsworth said. “We'd rather focus on very big wins than try to do a whole bunch of stuff,” he said. Asked specifically about plans for Facebook games during a Q&A after his keynote, he said, “Will we be there? Probably.” But it will do so when the company feels it has the right content for that platform, he said.

Of late, among videogame platforms that Disney has supported, most have been Nintendo’s DS and Wii, whose core audience lines up most closely with Disney’s target audience. But Disney Interactive also became a major online game player when it bought Club Penguin in 2007. In addition to online Club Penguin games, the company extended that brand to the DS and, to date, has sold more than 1.5 million units of Club Penguin: Elite Penguin Force for the DS since it shipped in late 2008, Wadsworth said in his keynote. The company will ship a new Club Penguin DS game, he disclosed. He didn’t cite the game’s name, but Disney said Thursday it will ship Club Penguin: Elite Penguin Force: Herbert’s Revenge this summer.

Much of Wadsworth’s keynote focused on “disruptive” emerging markets, including the iPhone, online and social games, that are challenging the traditional game market. Making business even more difficult has been the economic crisis, which hit the console game market especially hard last year, he said. “Our industry certainly faces some challenges,” he said. But “there’s never been a better time to be a consumer” because of the proliferation of new devices and platforms, expanded capabilities of devices and enhancements in connectivity options. The emerging markets have made it crucial for companies like Disney to find ways to “rise above the clutter,” he said.

The industry also is no longer seeing supply drive demand, but demand drive supply, in part due to the multitude of free content available, Wadsworth said. It’s become important to acquire customers, engage them and then hope they'll buy products in the future, he said. This stands to only grow in the future because of how tech-savvy young kids are today, he said. Young people are multi-taskers and “media sponges” exposed to about 11 hours of media a day, who want content when they want it and available on as many platforms as possible, he said. When it comes to TV, most young people no longer view content live when it’s televised, but via time-shifting methods, often on mobile devices or a computer, he said. Disney has learned it’s important to be “flexible” enough to allow customers to communicate with it, he also said. As an example, he said it initially ignored all ideas sent by users of its online game Toontown Online out of fear over legal issues involving unsolicited ideas. The company was basically telling such users that it didn’t want to hear what they had to say, he said. That policy has since been changed and Disney now welcomes such suggestions, he said.

D.I.C.E. Summit Notebook …

Activision Blizzard CEO Robert Kotick admitted in a Thursday keynote at the Summit that his company has made mistakes since he has been at its helm. When executives get too caught up in financial issues, they can “overlook what’s really important,” including the passion that is at the heart of game creation, he said. “There were a lot of things that we've done wrong” in recent years, including the decision not to buy development studio Maxis, Kotick said. Activision executives went to meet with Maxis when it was on the acquisition block and saw the game Sim City 2000 as its only major title, overlooking developer Will Wright who was in an office they didn’t visit working on a game code-named Jefferson, he reminisced. That game, The Sims, went on to become a hit PC game that inspired a popular franchise for Electronic Arts (EA), which bought Maxis. When buying Guitar Hero co-creator RedOctane, Activision was also aware of but didn’t buy Harmonix, the original developer of that game, he said. If it had bought Harmonix, there would have been a larger profit opportunity, he said. Perhaps the largest mistake was Activision not buying developer Blizzard Entertainment for $700 million when it was an independent company, he said, saying his company scoffed at the price, but wound up merging years later with Vivendi Universal Games, which owned Blizzard at that point, in a deal valued at about $7 billion. However, he said, “I don’t think it would have worked earlier” if Activision had bought Blizzard. Ex-Activision developers started the companies Jamdat Mobile and Pandemic, two companies that were later bought by EA, Kotick said, joking there was a pattern. “If you want to sell out and move on, there are definitely other companies you can talk to,” he said, referring to EA. Kotick disclosed that he also tried, but failed, to buy Commodore in the 1980s, believing the PC maker’s Amiga 500 computer could have been transformed into a great game system. Kotick also disclosed Thursday the creation by Activision Blizzard of a $500,000 independent game competition.

The Entertainment Software Association continues to fight government efforts to make it illegal for retailers to rent or sell M-rated games to minors despite the ESA’s going undefeated to date in its 10 court battles on that front, ESA Senior Vice President and General Counsel Ken Doroshow said. A recent Rhode Island bill pending now would make it criminal to sell M-rated games to minors, he said. There’s also a “troubling” effort underway by the U.S. government to create a new standard for the exclusion of certain speech from First Amendment protection, he said. The government wants to balance “the value” of speech versus societal concerns -- “a very dangerous route to go down,” he said. While the case specifically concerns an effort to stop distribution of video showing animal cruelty, he said there could be applications to the game industry if the government wins.