We'll probably remember 2019 as the year Disney finally got all the stones needed to build their own endless gauntlet. With eight of the ten most profitable films of the year and most of them making more than €1 billion at the box office, Disney's intellectual property was fully exposed. Avengers: Endgame became the most profitable movie of all time, continued to pump out live-action remakes of its animated classics, and the Skywalker saga reached its conclusion. But most importantly, Disney has confirmed its cultural hegemony with the launch of Disney Plus, a direct-to-consumer streaming platform that cuts out all the annoying middlemen to deliver video content to your eyeballs. With just one new show (The Mandalorian) and a huge back catalogue, Disney managed to register ten million subscribers in the first 24 hours. But while Disney seems unbeatable now, there is a port of escape in Disney's Death Star: the games. Disney's entire business model centers around owning the intellectual properties that define our childhoods. This is how they wire you up for suites, reboots, toys, and endless theme parks. It's strange, then, that Disney's relationship with gaming seems to exist mostly in the form of a license these days. Disney doesn't have the same dominant stake in gaming as it does in other media. Nostalgia is a powerful thing for Disney: it helped sell Disney Plus and fueled the success of live-action remakes like Aladdin and The Lion King. But it has nothing in the games that will have the same attraction in the coming decades, when today's younger generations will become nostalgic for Fortnite. Console games self-published by Disney until May 2016, which marked the end of the Disney Infinity toy-for-life game, so everything currently designed for Disney-owned consoles exists as part of a licensing agreement. In some ways, it could be seen as a weakness not to make and sell its own blockbusters, even though Disney's current licensing strategy has produced hit games made by the likes of Sony and EA, along with the Avengers game. Square Enix to come. Meanwhile, older titles have been republished on every modern platform possible. Still, there's something radical Disney could do to make it more playable: it could turn Disney Plus into a gaming platform.
Disney Occasion
(Image credit: EA) 2019 wasn't just a great year for Disney. With Google Stadia, it saw the launch of the first credible streaming gaming platform. Although it has received a mixed reception from gamers, Google has proven beyond a doubt that the technology is now mature enough to work. The future of gaming isn't some powerful box under our TVs: it's server farms that deliver full triple-A gaming experiences to anything with a screen and an internet connection. And it turns out that functionally, this is very similar to a video streaming platform like Disney Plus, at least for end users. Disney Plus provides the business with an endpoint in millions of homes, connecting it directly with consumers. So why stick to video? Why limit ambitions to the Mandalorian and previous episodes of X-Men: The Animated Series? Why not use the same application to also offer gaming experiences? The idea is not as crazy as it seems. In 2018, Netflix debuted Bandersnatch, in which viewers could choose paths to take on a TV show with branching storylines. It has also been a resounding success, perhaps hinting at a future where the lines between different types of media are blurring. The underlying technology for delivering streaming video and "real" gaming experiences is very different: one is to provide static video files, and the other essentially requires a cloud gaming console and a low latency connection. But in theory, there's no reason the Disney Plus app couldn't be an interface for both. To the end user, a game may appear on the Disney Plus interface like a TV show or movie. And most Disney Plus devices are Bluetooth-enabled, so connecting a controller wouldn't be a problem.
Imagine the future
(Image credit: Marvel) In 2016, planning for Disney+, Disney bought a €1 billion stake in streaming company BAMTech, which it later increased to a €1,58 billion wholly controlling stake. While it may not be as publicized as Disney's acquisition of Lucasfilm and Marvel, it could be just as fateful, as it gave Disney the technological foundation on which to build its new platform. platform. Of course, in the scenario where Disney Plus would become a gaming platform, this would require a lot of extra work. However, in terms of content, Disney has a rich catalog of licensed games as a possible starting point. Most recently, Jedi: Fallen Order was released on consoles and PC, developed by Respawn and published by EA. Next year, Marvel Avengers, developed by Crystal Dynamics and published by Square Enix, is coming to consoles and PC. These games are not exclusive to a particular format and are the type of games that could attract people to play games through Disney Plus. In the event that Disney Plus serves up games, Disney would probably have to start self-publishing again to really expand its offering, rather than just licensing third-party games. But you could also negotiate deals for future licensed games on the ones that come on the streaming platform and on consoles, in the same way that new games can appear on Xbox Game Pass while selling for high prices. on PS4. Disney Plus would have yet another reason to entice people to sign up, and a big difference to its growing number of competitors, and these games would reach an audience of millions of people who wouldn't typically spend $60 for a new title. Hell, Disney wouldn't even need new games to get started, since they already have an extensive catalog of licensed titles. Imagine playing Kingdom Hearts on Disney Plus, or older Star Wars games, or Aladdin on the Genesis/Mega Drive. These games are often repackaged and sold on modern platforms because people still want to play them. A gaming platform would also mean that Disney could, if it's feeling brave, experiment with a new gaming IP to find the next Fortnite. Even if Disney continued to use third parties to develop the games, it would still retain greater control of its brands.
Disney probably doesn't need more influence, though
(Image credit: Insomniac Games) For Disney, it would probably be desirable to have the same kind of presence in games as in movies and other media. Whether this is a good thing for consumers is another matter. Disney already has immense corporate power and a shared spirit - mastering the game would only make the mouse more unbeatable. So, as compelling as it can be for a large company, or even as compelling as it can be for Star Wars fans who want all their Star Wars content in one place on their smart TV, it can be -It's actually It's a good thing Disney doesn't dominate the games the same way they do the movies. Still, this is one more way that Disney Plus could offer the best Disney experience in one place.