Wreck-It Ralph hits iOS

Wreck-It Ralph is to be a movie about a villain who decides he doesn't want to be a bad guy any more. A video game villain. Look, it's a Pixar animated film, it features bad guys like Bowser and Zangief and it's currently three games in one. One is Fix-It Felix - the game Ralph is a bad guy in - one is Sweet Climber (a lolly themed Doodle Jump-type game) and the last is Hero's Duty, a twin stick shooter similar to Geometry Wars (without the physics stuff or space).


Games have come a long way since Fix-It Felix never came out.

I'm actually bringing it up for two reasons. First, last week Disney - the people who own Pixar - bought Lucasfilm. This means we are actually going to see a new Star Wars film. That's for realsies. But secondly, the fact that Wreck-It Ralph is getting iOS game and not a PS3 or Xbox 360 game is potentially telling move for the previous development.

Disney is moving away from home console games. Yes, they're still making Wii and 3DS and DS games for Wreck-It Ralph, but there was a time when Disney movies got console games by default. That time was as recent as June this year - when they released a game for Brave. How will this movement affect Lucasfilm games? Typically I'd say we'll have to wait and see, but Polygon actually got to ask Disney about it - and Disney straight up said,

We're likely to focus more on social and mobile than we are on console. We'll look opportunistically at console, most likely in licensing rather than publishing, but we think that given the nature of these characters and how well known they are, and the storytelling, that they lend themselves quite nicely, as they've already demonstrated to the other platforms.

Honestly, that seems entirely reasonable - as long as it doesn't affect the excellent looking Star Wars 1313. When was the last time you played a good Disney game on one of the big consoles anyway? Aladdin, on the Mega Drive? Meanwhile, on iOS you're looking at small, bite sized games that don't cost a lot of money and so don't require terribly large amounts in return. It's hard to be disappointed by a Doodle Jump-type game when it comes with two extra games alongside it - especially if it costs $0.99, right?

Still, I wouldn't mind seeing a simultaneous release on Android. Wreck-It Ralph is on the Apple Store now.