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Hollywood and games 4.0 — How the love-hate relationship has evolved over time

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 30 min

NBCUniversal decided to shut down its game publishing division after almost three years. The company will go back to a strategy of licensing games to external game developers and publishers. It could still prosper with games, but it’s a lower risk, lower reward strategy.

And it’s not the first time a major Hollywood studio has done this. Disney shut its mobile game publishing business a few years ago and switched to licensing. It recently acquired FoxNext Games with the acquisition of Fox, and now Disney is selling that game division off as well.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.