Together with
The Future. During Disney’s latest quarterly earnings call, CEO Bob Iger announced that Disney is partnering with Fortnite creator Epic Games on a new entertainment universe — a destination where users can watch, play, and shop everything Disney. Considering Iger’s special relationship with Apple and now Epic, Disney may be the force that reunites the two warring brands and brings Fortnite back to iOS devices as part of a deal to mold the Disney universe.
Game Central Station
Leave it to Disney to take the metaverse mainstream.
- Disney’s new “games and entertainment universe” with Epic will be populated by characters from every Disney franchise, including Star Wars, Pixar, Marvel, and Avatar.
- Users can “create their own stories and experiences, express their fandom in a distinctly Disney way, and share content with each other in ways that they love,” per Iger.
- The whole thing — games, experiences, and digital goods — will be interoperable with Fortnite. Like that game, the Disney universe will be powered by Unreal Engine.
- As part of the deal, Disney has also made a $1.5 billion minority investment in Epic that’ll be used to fund the “multiyear” project.
The project is a major return to the gaming space for Disney, which shut down Disney Interactive Studios in 2016 and has mulled over acquiring a major publisher like EA Games. In recent years, Disney has focused on licensing its titles to several companies, including Epic.
Ironically, during his brief CEO tenure, Bob Chapek designated the metaverse as one of the three “strategic pillars” of Disney before Iger returned and canceled the plans. It just goes to show that some ideas never die… but who gets final credit for them is slippery.
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