With their E3 announcements, Disney's putting gaming at the forefront

With their E3 announcements, Disney's putting gaming at the forefront

This story about making gaming a core strategic pillar, boiled down, in 1:40 minutes.

What's the fuss?

Disney made a big splash this year with many large and unexpected announcements at this year's E3, signifying how video games aren't no longer considered ancillary to the company's strategy.

The situation

At its core, Disney is a movie making business, but also produced their own video games up until 2016 with the closure of their own game studio. 

  • Disney Interactive Studios was responsible for many horrendous movie tie-in games as well as a few originals. 
  • Since 2016, Disney has transitioned to a licensing model where the company lends out its IP to other experienced video game studios instead of making games in-house.

Because of this, Disney had a number of game announcements at this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) hailing from many different studios. 

Boiling it down

It's no secret that if you combine the music and movie industries and multiply them by 2, it still won't eclipse the video game industry in terms of size. 

  • In response to this statistic, we're starting to see both music and Hollywood try to breach the gaming world to take advantage of the massive audience. 
  • The advantage that Disney has is their almost infinite catalogue of recognizable IPs, meaning that they have gaming studios clamoring to get a seat at the table due to a higher chance of sales success.

The power of the crossover, especially in video games, is a powerful tool to boost engagement. 

  • Usually consisting of limited-time events, fans are incentivized to log back into the game (sometimes after a hiatus) to take advantage of these new experiences before they are gone forever. 
  • Sea of Thieves' player base has steadily declined over time, so perhaps the developers are banking on the recognizability of Captain Jack Sparrow to boost their numbers.

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