Please support Game Informer. Print magazine subscriptions are less than $2 per issue
Disney Interactive Returns To Profit After Layoffs Earlier This Year
Disney Interactive, the mammoth entertainment company’s video game division, suffered significant losses last fiscal year. The company spent its 2014 fiscal year reorganizing, which included the elimination of approximately 700 jobs.
The company has reported on its full-year financial performance, indicating a turnaround for the Interactive unit. Revenues for the year were up 22 percent from $1.064 billion to 1.299 billion year-over-year. Net Income jumped from a loss of $87 million last year to positive performance of $116 million in FY14.
Disney attributes performance to Disney Infinity, a mobile game called Tsum Tsum, and a minimum guarantee on an unspecified games licensing contract. The latter could be related to mobile publisher DeNA, which recently released Star Wars Galactic Defense for mobile devices.
[Source: Disney]
Our Take
Disney has drastically re-oriented its gaming division, though it still has work to do. Disney Interactive has benefitted greatly from Disney Infinity and the general consumer interest in toys-to-life products. The company needs to start preparing for a world in which those toys pile up next to plastic instruments, or else it will find itself in financial trouble once more.
I’d like to ask you to support Game Informer’s continued coverage of games with a subscription. For less than two dollars per issue, we mail you a full year of 10 print magazines, each with cover stories and preview features filled with exclusive details about the most exciting upcoming games. We profile and interview game creators. We look back on the rich history of gaming, and we celebrate what’s next.
Here on the website, we offer much of our content for free, including game reviews, daily news, videos, event coverage, and more – all with minimal ads.
We do so with a small editorial team, alongside contributing paid writers from around the world – over 65 individuals from 9 countries around the world, just in the last couple of years.
It’s not possible without support.
In a time when game makers and games coverage have faced hard struggles and layoffs, the future of this 30+ year magazine and community is at risk. Our new standalone magazine subscription is the number one way you can keep us alive – and we believe you’ll get a pretty fantastic gaming magazine in your mailbox every few weeks for your trouble.
Thank you.
