Disney: A Licensing Tale

Disney's Random Hearts, which was created by Japan's Square Enix, has shipped over four million units worldwide. The game's success is a good illustration of how licensing continues to change the way digital entertainment is produced.

Players start the game as Sora, a 14-year old boy who gets separated from his friends Riku and Kairi after a storm rips through his home. He sets off to find them, and along the way, he meets Court Wizard Donald and Captain Goofy, along with 100 other Disney characters that are scattered throughout a variety of Disney worlds.

As the game industry continues to grow up, licensing popular titles has become an important part of the business. With costs for big projects skyrocketing up into the neighborhood $10 million per title, smaller studios need to find some way to defray the costs, just in case the game isn't a hit.

Large publishers, though, don't help the small fry. Many contract three or four different studios to work on one game, and at some point, they choose one company to finish the job. That leaves the other groups out in the cold, oftentimes over-staffed and without any other games in the pipeline.

Instead of competing for big licensing projects, many smaller teams are looking for less expensive approaches to the development process because the more popular licenses are increasingly going to more established development studios. Square Enix, for example, has consistently pushed the edges of gaming with its highly influential Final Fantasy series that blend lush anime graphics and sprawling game worlds.