The Walt Disney Company has confirmed that the Vlix App has been terminated. Vlix was sort of like Instagram for video instead of photos until Instagram became Instagram for video itself. Hard to compete with that. Disney purchases its developer Spotmixer about a year ago and that team was largely responsible for the new Story.us app.
Add SpotMixer to LucasArts, Junction Point, Propaganda Games and Black Rock Studio (which is just a partial list) as app or game development companies that Disney purchased only to later shut down. This seems like a dangerous trend for Disney. Entrepreneurs who don’t want their babies to end up in the digital trash may start to avoid Disney’s advances if this trend keeps up. On the other hand the resources a company like Disney Interactive can bring to the table may just be too enticing for some developers to pass up.
(via Techcrunch)
That is one way to look at it, however most of these companies would have dissolved or gone under on their own. VLIX would not have been able to compete with Instagram with their own resources. The developers and owners of the company (probably one in the same) made a good pay day and now have additional resources to start another project.
I agree with Ed on this one. They knew full and well that they would be shuttered if they didn’t perform. The guys who sold this company are likely serial entrepreneurs. Serial entrepreneurs usually don’t have an emotional connection with their companies. Their goal is to get it going and eventually sell it. Once sold, they move on and create something else and do the same thing with that…
If I ran a company that had dead weight like this, I certainly wouldn’t want to hold onto it. It’s like opening a lemonade stand and realizing no one buys lemonade. What are you suppose to do? keep selling lemonade? It just didn’t work…
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