You ask, "How can DreamWorks Animation spend $160 million advertising a new movie?" Because it's about more than box office grosses.
After 2-1/2 years of work and an investment of about $10 million, DreamWorks Animation has started rolling out its first online virtual world -- a browser-based Web theme park tied to its "Kung Fu Panda" movie franchise.
The marketing push for "Kung Fu Panda World," which comes at a subscription cost of $5.95 per month, but can also be sampled after watching an online ad, kicks off Monday after a soft launch at the end of March ...
Will DreamWorks build more virtual worlds? "The experience of building this will help," said Batter, adding that a "How to Train Your Dragon" world is currently in the works.
It's all about exploiting different media platforms, and pulling down bucks from those platforms. DreamWorks Animation isn't a conglomerate (yet), so it has to generate cash where it can.
But of course, virtual games are far from a sure thing in InternetLand. The Mouse, for instance, has had successful games in the past, but it's also fallen on its large, corporate backside.
Posts
4 comments:
But of course, virtual games are far from a sure thing in InternetLand. The Mouse, for instance, has had successful games in the past, but it's also fallen on its large, corporate backside.
For ex., they still haven't quite been able to turn their "Pirates of the Caribbean" world into the next World of Warcraft...But they still get fans asking "will they ever bring back Virtual Magic Kingdom?"--A free site that originally supposed to be a one-year promotional stunt.
You take a great risk when you create a site where the Internet isn't free, and they don't always come when you build it. But DW should find that out soon enough.
Never even heard of "Virtual Magic Kingdom". It looks like it was retired too.
First off, I thought Kung Fu Panda was a good movie.
But this website is pretty lame, and is badly designed, slow, and aimed at children. As a bridge until the sequel, you'd think they would have come up with something cooler. Why didn't they let the film makers design the play and look of the site? It looks like every other lame internet game site.
Never even heard of "Virtual Magic Kingdom". It looks like it was retired too.
It was, in '08--
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Magic_Kingdom
But it'd been well-designed for guests and become such a runaway phenomenon with park-fans, it'd run three years, instead of just the one 50th-anniversary year it was supposed to.
One of the downsides, of course, is that a free popular site with customer loyalty doesn't automatically transfer over to a different pay-to-play site that might not have it...As Disney also found out trying to get Cars and Fairies worlds off the ground.
Post a Comment