Ephulgent

Ratatouille shipped on 13 platforms in 2007, sold nearly 4 million copies in 9 months, and 5 years later its publisher was bankrupt. HD broke the math on the entire genre. In the PS2 era, THQ could ship a Pixar tie-in for under $10M, sell 4M units at $40 retail, and book real profit. The Incredibles, Cars, and Rise of the Underminer moved 25M units combined. THQ pulled $1B in revenue and $68M in profit on exactly this model in fiscal 2007. Then the Xbox 360 and PS3 arrived. HD asset budgets for characters, environments, and animation multiplied fast. A tie-in that used to cost $5-10M now ran into the tens of millions. Review scores stopped forgiving "fine for kids." And the deadline didn't move. Movies ship when movies ship. Warner Bros saw this first. Their in-development The Dark Knight tie-in got killed in 2008. The team pivoted to a Batman game with no movie release date attached. That became Arkham Asylum. Rocksteady built a four-game franchise off that one decision. Every other publisher ran the same math. THQ exited licensed kids games in January 2012 and filed Chapter 11 eleven months later. Disney Interactive closed in 2016. Pixar's last narrative tie-in was Brave in 2012. The last major-studio same-year movie tie-in was Space Jam 2 in 2021, Game Pass only. A 4-million-unit movie tie-in is now a $100M+ investment on a release window you can't slip. Nobody runs that trade.