Playdom gets to work on Marvel games for Disney
Acquisition of Playdom a better deal than buying into traditional games company, says CEO
Disney has confirmed that its latest games acquisition, Playdom, is already at work on a social game based on Marvel IP.
Talking to investors following yesterday's third quarter results, CEO Bob Iger said that the company can make significant gains in social media, adding 50 million-plus fans of Disney properties to the 40 million Playdom users already on Facebook and other social services.
"There has been a deal made between Marvel and Playdom for a social game based on a Marvel characters," Iger said.
"We now have over 50 million people, who are members of various Disney, ESPN, and ABC Groups on Facebook. We began with a very solid base of people to market to and when you add to that the over 40 million people who are playing Playdom games already, that seemed pretty compelling to us."
Disney acquired Marvel last year for $4 billion, and slowly intends to bring licensing of its IP in-house, beginning with TV properties and publishing. Games will eventually follow, although deals like Activision's Spider-Man licence are in place until 2017.
Although Iger did confirm that a deal has been struck for a new Marvel console game, existing deals are also currently in place with Sega, THQ and Gazillion.
Iger said that the Playdom acquisition made sense financially as the company becomes more of an owner than a licensor, and it was less expensive than buying into a traditional games developer or publishing business.
"We actually were pursuing some licensing opportunities with ESPN and Marvel and as we look closely at the growth in that space, we felt that it is growth that we should participate in essentially as an owner-distributor rather than just as a licensor, and that the upside was enormous and the cost to enter the space in terms of the cost to make games is relatively limited, unlike the console business, where it's substantially more expensive.
He added: "Again, we look at licensing versus buying or basically self-publishing in a lot of different directions, and consumer products is a great example of that.
"This is one case where we felt that bringing that great talent at Playdom into the company and using that expertise to expand the company's awareness of, knowledge of, and business in social games, social networking and digital media had real value."