Movie-licensed games have invariably turned out to be piles of oldgarbage - with a few notable exceptions - but that's about to change according to Sega of America's VP of marketing, Scott Steiner.
Why are licensed games commonly such rushed disasters? Steiner explains: "Hollywood really can throw a grenade to game companies; they'd throw a license grenade over the wall and game companies would have six months to build a game and market it. No surprise the game might not have been the greatest."
But, discussing Sega's recent expanded partnership with Marvel, Steiner explains how things look set to improve.
Above: More Goldeneye, lessTMNT please
"As publishers and the different movie studios are recognizing how important videogames are to the marketing of a film to the [target] demographic, movie studios realize that they can't trivialize the interactive space," Steiner toldNext-Gen.biz.
"In 1991 or '92 the [movie] studios saw videogames as sort of chump change. They'd bounce perhaps a property six months before a game, basically when the movie was in the can, and publishers tried to crank it out with using an existing engine, threw a couple of artists on it, and shipped a 16-bit game," he goes on to explain.
"The whole industry, both industries, have coupled together and have evolved or advanced their craft to a point where both are taken extremely seriously and that just wasn't the case two years ago."
April 23, 2007
