Heavy Iron Studios company

Recognized as a leader in developing mass-market titles for video game consoles, Heavy Iron Studios, Inc. is an independent video game developer, based in Los Angeles, California. Originally founded as a THQ studio in 1999, Heavy Iron has worked in close partnership over the years with creators of high-profile animated feature film and licensed TV properties including Disney*Pixar, Nickelodeon, Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox and Zuffa/UFC to offer compelling, interactive gaming experiences across multiple generations of console platforms. Heavy Iron Studios, Inc. has been a wholly independent and privately held company since June 2009, with a combined lifetime total of over 36 million units in sales, generating over $500 million in revenue.

Some of Heavy Iron’s previous hit titles include Scooby-Doo!: Night of 100 Frights (2002) and SpongeBob Squarepants: Battle for Bikini Bottom (2003). Both titles achieved over three million units in sales on PlayStation2 alone. Each of these games was also nominated consecutively as “Children’s/Family Game of the Year” by the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences.
In 2004, Heavy Iron followed up these successes with even bigger critically and commercially acclaimed hits including Disney/Pixar’s The Incredibles and The SpongeBob Squarepants Movie Game. Each of these titles has shipped over 7.5 million units worldwide. In 2005, Heavy Iron worked with Disney/Pixar to continue the Incredibles’ story with the video game Incredibles: Rise of the Underminer to the joy of many fans.

Two years later, in 2007, Heavy Iron completed a project for the Oscar-winning animated film, Ratatouille, in collaboration with Disney/Pixar. The video game was released over multiple platforms and was well-received, taking home the award for “Best Animated Video Game” at the 2008 Annie Awards.

Heavy Iron’s next multiplatform video game, WALL-E, was released in late June 2008 in conjunction with the highly-anticipated Disney/Pixar animated feature of the same name. This title was Heavy Iron’s first of many developed for the Nintendo Wii. WALL-E was also the first Western developed video game to be fully localized for an Arabic audience and released in the Middle East. Holding to Heavy Iron’s high standards, WALL-E was nominated for “Best Animation in a Video Game” at the 2009 Annie Awards.

2009 was an exciting year for Heavy Iron. In June, the studio spun out of THQ to become a fully independent company, Heavy Iron Studios, Inc. Around the same time, two of the highest-rated games that Heavy Iron had developed – Disney*Pixar’s UP and Nickelodeon’s SpongeBob’s Truth or Square were released to market. Disney*Pixar’s UP was a multiplatform release based on the Academy award-winning animated feature film while SpongeBob’s Truth or Square saw Heavy Iron return to its highly successful partnership with Nickelodeon and was the first SpongeBob game to be released on the Xbox 360 platform.

Coincidentally enough after becoming an independent developer, Heavy Iron bid and secured a console project from THQ, and this title would ship in July 2011 as the company’s first gesture recognition driven title, UFC Personal Trainer: The Ultimate Fitness System for the Xbox 360 Kinect, PS3 Move and Wii. To this day it is one of the top five highest rated fitness games on Metacritic. It also won "Best Alternative Sports Game of E3 2011" from 1UP.com.

Last year was a banner year in which Heavy Iron wrapped up development on three different console titles. In September 2012, Majesco released the studio’s second motion-based fitness title, Harley Pasternak’s Hollywood Workout for the Xbox 360 Kinect and Wii. In November, Disney shipped Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two, which Heavy Iron completed for the Wii U in time to reach retail as a launch title for the new Nintendo console. Last, and certainly not least, our most recent game, Family Guy: Back to the Multiverse, shipped to stores everywhere on Xbox 360, PlayStation3 and PC/Steam.

Most recently, Heavy Iron worked with Disney and Avalanche Software to bring Disney Infinity to the Wii and Wii U, which launched on August 18th, 2013. Stay tuned to the news page to find more about all our exciting upcoming projects.