Shuttering the Games Division

What the Mouse buyeth, the Mouse can taketh away.

Walt Disney Co. (DIS) is halting video- game development at its recently acquired Lucasfilm division in an effort to cut costs.

Disney, the world’s largest entertainment company, will focus on licensing “Star Wars” content rather than developing games internally, Miles Perkins, a Lucasfilm spokesman, said. ...

Nobody thought Disney was purchasing Lucasfilm for its game division. But few imagined the conglomerate would shut it down almost immediately.

The game business is inherently tricky: DreamWorks had a games division for the first few years of its existence, but it turned out to be a money losing enterprise and wasn't around long.

Diz Co. has made several attempts to build a strong presence in Gameworld, but it's almost always had problems:

"The games business for Disney has not been profitable and not met the same level of excellence we have in ABC or our parks or Pixar. If we’re going to be here, we want to make high quality stuff and keep doubling and tripling down. ..."

--John Pleasants

So it's understandable that the Mouse is trimming game exposure inside its latest acquisition. One other conundrum: The game business is going through the kinds of changes that other businesses using little silver disks have also encountered.

Everything is migrating to the internet.