SEPT. 9, 2009 • The Los Angeles Times reported that Universal Pictures was no longer actively financing video game projects. The motion picture studio had been working under a formula where some of its projects were developed internally, and others were licensed out to third-party publishers. The change came after its in-house Wanted: Weapons of Fate generated only 100,000 units in sales in the month after its March release. The game was delayed and came out nine months after the release of the Angelina Jolie movie it was tied to, and three months after the film’s DVD release.
Impact: Hollywood and the game industry have been going through regular cycles for the past 30 years. Film studios will license big movies to game publishers. Then they will decide to finance game production themselves. After getting burned, they go back to licensing out IP. After several years the studios forget their past struggles and start trying to develop games in-house again. Making games out of movies is simply not an easy proposition. It works well for established franchises like Star Wars or Batman, but for most new movie products the risk of failure is extremely high.
