Bob Iger, the CEO of Disney, explained that the decision was significant when considering “where Gen Alpha, Gen Z, and even millennials are spending their time in media.”
Disney Invests $1.5 Billion in Epic Games, The Creators of “Fortnite”
On Wednesday, CEO Bob Iger announced that Disney is making a significant investment of $1.5 billion to acquire a stake in Epic Games. This move marks Disney’s largest venture into the gaming industry to date.
In an interview with CNBC on Wednesday afternoon, Disney CEO Bob Iger talked about the project as the company’s “biggest foray into the games space ever.” Characters from popular franchises like Star Wars, Marvel, Pixar, and the Avatar movies will be included in a new “games and entertainment universe” that will exist and work with Fortnite.
When you consider the demographic trends and the ways that Gen Alpha, Gen Z, and even millennials are consuming media and time, “which I think is not only timely, but an important step,” .The amount of time spent playing games is quite dramatic; in fact, for certain demographics, it is on equal or greater than the amount of time spent watching TV and movies, said Iger.
“It’s critical for us to continue to stay relevant and create ways that consumers can interact the way they want to with our storytelling and our characters,” he said.
Iger told CNBC that it would take “not years—well, maybe a couple years. We’ll see,” but he did not provide a timeline for the project’s launch.
Fortnite and Lego have recently joined forces to create a survival crafting game on the gaming platform, resembling the popular game Minecraft. Additionally, Fortnite has introduced the Fortnite Festival, a rhythm game developed by Harmonix, the creators of Rock Band.
Related: Warner Bros. Discovery, Disney, and Fox Collaborate to Introduce a New Sports Streaming Service.
Epic Games founder and CEO Tim Sweeney said that, “Disney was one of the first companies to believe in the potential of bringing their worlds together with ours in Fortnite, and they use Unreal Engine across their portfolio,” and “Now we’re collaborating on something entirely new to build a persistent, open and interoperable ecosystem that will bring together the Disney and Fortnite communities.”
D’Amaro explained, “This will allow us to share with a large audience our amazing compilation of experiences and stories from throughout the company in ways we could never have imagined before. We will meet customers where they are and enable them to interact with Disney in the ways that are most meaningful to them thanks to the industry-leading technology of Epic Games and the open ecosystem of “Fortnite.”
Fortnite maintains its stronghold on a remarkably vast player base. In the month of December 2023, it claimed the highest number of monthly active users on both the PlayStation 5 and Xbox. Approximately 36% of active PS5 players and 31% of active Xbox Series players engaged with Fortnite at least once during December. This represents a notable 5% surge on Sony’s platform and a commendable 3% rise on Microsoft’s.
“The last thing we need right now is to be distracted… by an activist or activists that frankly have a completely different agenda and don’t understand our company, its assets, or even the essence of the Disney brand,” Iger said in a CNBC interview, downplaying those efforts.