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Disney unveils Toontown game, sees Web theme park
Reuters, 05.05.03, 12:01 AM ET
LOS ANGELES, May 5 (Reuters) - Walt Disney Co. (nyse: DIS - news - people) will launch in June its online multiplayer video game Toontown, which pits cartoon characters against humorless robots, with an advertising campaign and a $9.95 per month subscription fee, the company said on Monday.
The game which has been in trial for months and lets young players collaborate on line in a battle fought with gags rather than bullets is the first unit of what designers plan as a virtual theme park.
"We have a very grand vision for what an online theme park is," Ken Goldstein, executive vice president of Disney Online, told Reuters in an interview. "The next land would be themed to another sort of traditional Disney genre and there would be a common area between them."
Disney took an $800 million charge a few years ago to write off investments in its go.com portal, its first major foray into the Web, which was big and unprofitable .
Since then the Internet group has retrenched, focusing on cracking a profit.
Toontown has been available for $7.95 a month since October 2002 at http://www.toontown.com and been a hit with early adopters, Goldstein said. As many as 2,000 players sign on at one time on some weekends, he said.
The game, aimed at youngsters 8 years old and up, lets players wander a virtual 3-D world where they play games like tug of war to win supplies of gags and tricks. Those can be used to beat the machines, or Cogs, which cannot stand a joke and are trying to overtake the colorful world.
Players can see each other, work together, and Disney has designed chat software with lots of parental controls.
Goldstein said the monthly subscription price could go up, too. "My data tells me that we may still be a little low," he said.
Copyright 2003, Reuters News Service
Reuters, 05.05.03, 12:01 AM ET
LOS ANGELES, May 5 (Reuters) - Walt Disney Co. (nyse: DIS - news - people) will launch in June its online multiplayer video game Toontown, which pits cartoon characters against humorless robots, with an advertising campaign and a $9.95 per month subscription fee, the company said on Monday.
The game which has been in trial for months and lets young players collaborate on line in a battle fought with gags rather than bullets is the first unit of what designers plan as a virtual theme park.
"We have a very grand vision for what an online theme park is," Ken Goldstein, executive vice president of Disney Online, told Reuters in an interview. "The next land would be themed to another sort of traditional Disney genre and there would be a common area between them."
Disney took an $800 million charge a few years ago to write off investments in its go.com portal, its first major foray into the Web, which was big and unprofitable .
Since then the Internet group has retrenched, focusing on cracking a profit.
Toontown has been available for $7.95 a month since October 2002 at http://www.toontown.com and been a hit with early adopters, Goldstein said. As many as 2,000 players sign on at one time on some weekends, he said.
The game, aimed at youngsters 8 years old and up, lets players wander a virtual 3-D world where they play games like tug of war to win supplies of gags and tricks. Those can be used to beat the machines, or Cogs, which cannot stand a joke and are trying to overtake the colorful world.
Players can see each other, work together, and Disney has designed chat software with lots of parental controls.
Goldstein said the monthly subscription price could go up, too. "My data tells me that we may still be a little low," he said.
Copyright 2003, Reuters News Service
