Warner Bros. Purchases Former Disney Game Studio
Avalanche Studios, a Salt Lake City-based video game developing team, has been purchased by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment after spending several years as a Disney company. Founded in 1995, Avalanche mainly did outsource work on Mortal Kombat and Dragon Ball Z games until Disney, looking to break into video games directly, snatched them up.
Under the Mouse House, Avalanche made a name for themselves by bringing the world the Disney Infinity games, marrying collectible figures with interactive environments (even though Skylanders did it first). While Disney Infinity was a hit, it wasn’t enough of a hit, and the company shut down the production last year, dumping Avalanche in the process. The studio was free to look for other owners, and now they work for WB.
So under new management, what will be Avalanche Studios’ first game? It’ll be something based on……um, Cars 3. Yeah, their first client is Disney. Back when Avalanche was unloaded, Disney publicly commented that henceforth they would be outsourcing their video game projects to third-party clients rather than developing them internally. And the first of these clients will be….the very guys they fired.
I’m sure this was all very necessary, but don’t ask me to explain it.