I think the thing about Pixar is not that they beat classic animation, but when it came to computer animated movies, Pixar, for a very, very long time, was far and away better that just about every other studio. Dreamworks had its moment in the spotlight with Shrek, but then went largely downhill until How to Train Your Dragon. Other studios have, more recently, begun to catch up. But for a long time, there was a long disparity between the quality of work Pixar was doing with computer-animated movies and that of their competition.