Disney Sells FoxNext Game Studio To Scopely
FoxNext was the developer of the mobile game “Marvel Strike Force.”
I used to have a baseball coach who used to say, “Go get the fox, boys…”
It annoyed the heck out of me back in the day. And I still, thirty years later, have no idea what he meant. Unfortunately, I keep being brought back to less-than-memorable, frigid New England junior varsity baseball fields because the word “Fox” keeps coming up in headlines.
However, the word “Fox” seems to be an endangered species in and around The Walt Disney Company. In fact, these days Disney is getting rid of the “Fox”; from iconic studio names to lesser known entities.
FoxNext We Hardly Knew Ye
Case in point: The Los Angeles Times reported…
Walt Disney Co. is selling video game studio FoxNext in the latest example of the Burbank entertainment company trimming assets it acquired from 21st Century Fox.
Disney is selling FoxNext Games Los Angeles, known for titles including mobile game “Marvel Strike Force,” to Culver City game maker Scopely, the companies said Wednesday. Scopely is also buying San Jose gaming subsidiary Cold Iron Studios from Disney.
Financial terms were not immediately available.
Regarding FoxNext
The LA Times explained that “Marvel Strike Force” launched in March 2018, generating over $150 million in sales in its first year.
Meanwhile, FoxNext is in the midst of designing “Avatar: Pandora Rising,” a game based on the blockbuster film.
This particular development is in line with Disney CEO’s public thoughts on video games and their place in the Disney portfolio.
Iger Predicated This Sale
Photo credit: CNBC.com
Last February, Iger told investors on a quarterly earnings call:
“We’re obviously mindful of the size of that business but over the years we’ve tried our hand at self-publishing … and we’ve found that we haven’t been particularly good at the self-publishing side,”said Iger in a story posted by The Hollywood Reporter. “We’ve just decided that the best place for us to be in that space is licensing and not publishing. We have good relationships with some of those that we’re licensing to, notably EA.”
Furthermore, the deal does not include a portfolio of licensed game titles based on Fox intellectual property, “which will continue to be a part of Disney’s licensed games business,” noted the LA Times. Nor does the agreement include FoxNext’s virtual reality business.
