Higher-ups withinDisneyreportedly want to go all in on the gaming industry, ending its current practice of licencing out its properties to other studios. It’s said that they want to pull this off by making huge acquisitions, citingEAas an example of the kind of company Disney apparently has its sights on.
This comes from a report on Disney CEO Bob Iger, courtesy ofBloomberg. Here, it’s claimed that Iger’s deputies are urging their boss to push Disney’s dealings in the gaming industry further. However, Iger is said to be “noncommittal”, so don’t expect any big plays from Disney anytime soon.
The Bloomberg report centres around Bob Iger’s disastrous second term as Disney CEO, coming in after the previous big boss, Bob Chapek, was ousted in late 2022. Inheriting a mess, the report reveals information gathered from anonymous current and former employees, painting a picture of Iger as a CEO who is too cautious to make any decisive plans for Disney’s future.
“Iger’s deputies are pushing him to consider a bolder transformation of Disney from gaming licensee to gaming giant through, say, an acquisition of Electronic Arts,” reads the report. “But, as with everything else, he’s been noncommittal.”
Even if Iger is refusing to budge on Disney’s current gaming plans - which is to largely stay uninvolved - the idea that others within the company want to expand this area of the business is huge. Iger, like Chapek, could lose his position as CEO if Disney keeps underperforming. Should Iger be next to leave, and his deputies stay in place, then the next boss may be more open to these suggestions, and thus, introduce another huge player in the gaming market.
This would add to the increased consolidation we’re seeing in the industry, with small to medium-sized studios routinely swallowed up by one of the giants. Unfortunately, this means that when one of these huge companies has a bad quarter, it’s taken out on all of its studios, as we’ve seen recently with layoffs across Embracer Group - even resulting inVolition being shut down entirely.
Of course, such a move would have huge implications for licenced Disney games too. For years now,Star WarsandMarvelgames have been handled by a wide range of developers, but as Disney did with its TV shows a few years ago, it may pull these licences to instead make the games in-house. This is all hypothetical right now though, as it’s unlikely that Iger would make such a sweeping change anytime soon if this report is to be believed.
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