As part of a rather sizable financial investment into Epic from Disney, $1.5 billion to be exact, Disney and Epic will be working closely together to create new games and develop the “Disney universe.”
Talking about the investment, Disney CEO Bob Iger said:
“We’ve ventured into a strategic relationship with Epic Games, the maker of ‘Fortnite,’ to not only invest in the company Epic — we took a minority stake, $1.5 billion investment — but we’re also creating with them a huge Disney universe that will be for gaming and for play and for watching and even for shopping for digital goods and maybe even ultimately physical goods.”
According to Bob Iger, this proposed Disney Universe will live alongside Fortnite and will be entirely interconnected with the wildly popular free-to-play game.
“This represents, probably, our biggest foray into the games space ever, which I think is not only timely, but an important step when you look at the demographic trends and when you look at where Gen Alpha, Gen Z and even Millennials are spending their time in media.”
Notably, this isn’t the first time that Disney and Epic have collaborated on Fortnite, and characters from the Disney roaster, including Marvel, Star Wars, The Nightmare Before Christmas and even Tron, have previously been made available in the game.
And while Fortnite is no stranger to collaboration, a $1.5 billion investment is new grounds for both companies. This is also not Disney’s first time playing around in the gaming space. While they’ve had significant success with their PlayStation titles, most of the company’s tie-in games were forgettable at best, something that Iger acknowledges:
“We’ve licensed, I think, $9 billion in franchises, including the ‘Spider-Man’ franchise, which is the most successful video game last year.
The conclusion I reached was we have to be there and we have to be there as soon as we possibly can. The numbers of ‘Fortnite’ have been really compelling.
We have skin in the game, but we also build a world where we’re actually not creating too much risk for the company. As we see it, this is the best of all worlds in many respects, from a business venture perspective, and it’s certainly great for consumers who love to interact with our characters already in video game format. I’m actually really thrilled about it.”