Pixar
Pixar Animation Studios, commonly referred to as Pixar (), is an American computer animation film studio based in Emeryville, California, that is a subsidiary of Walt Disney Studios, owned by the Walt Disney Company. Pixar began in 1979 as the Graphics Group, part of the Lucasfilm computer division, before its spin-out as a corporation in 1986, with funding by Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs, who became the majority shareholder. Disney purchased Pixar in 2006 at a valuation of $7.4 billion by converting each share of Pixar stock to 2.3 shares of Disney stock, a transaction that resulted in Jobs becoming Disney's largest single shareholder at the time. Pixar is best known for CGI-animated feature films created with RenderMan, Pixar's own implementation of the industry-standard RenderMan image-rendering application programming interface, used to generate high-quality images.
Disney's Animated Storybook
Jobs said that while Pixar staff enjoyed creating the titles, the studio chose to focus talent on films produced under its partnership with Disney, as that was "where our greatest opportunities lie". Ultimately, the "uncertain future of this market, combined with Pixar's enhanced opportunities to create longer format film and made for home video products under its new partnership with Disney, triggered Pixar's decision to redirect its valuable talent". The computer games operation dissolved on March 31, 1997 and no further games were made, while Kerwin was assigned to start a shortfilm group. Their first project, "Geri's Game", was released alongside "A Bug's Life" and started a trend of shorts being paired with films. Robertson Stephens analyst Keith Benjamin felt it "[made] no sense for Pixar to waste their scarce talent on CD-ROMs now that they have a better deal with Disney. They're going to concentrate on films because that's where the real money is". Pixar co-founder, Ed Catmull, told "Variety" in 1999 "we did the very best and only did fine financially" on the games, noting that the company spent as much on them as they did on films. When asked in 2012 if Pixar would return to the gaming industry, "Brave" director Mark Andrews firmly said "no" based on his experience at the Interactive Products Group, while the film's producer Katherine Sarafian said "I don't think we would consider it now because we want to focus on the primary business of filmmaking".