Why Disney Licensed Star Wars to Electronic Arts
3 views - published on May 23rd, 2013 in Disney News tagged deals, Disney, disney dealsStar Wars fans can get romantic about their favorite scholarship novella saga. So it was no warn final month when some of them were dissapoint about Walt Disney’s (DIS) astonishing preference to cease growth at Lucasfilm’s video diversion multiplication and concentration on chartering deals instead.
Disney didn’t wait prolonged to act. On May 6, it announced an exclusive, multiyear agreement to permit Star Wars to Electronic Arts (EA), a second largest video diversion company. In other words, people spooky with a authorization can demeanour brazen to some-more digital diversions as they wait for Disney to recover a hotly expected seventh Star Wars film in 2015.
The agreement is a depart from Disney’s bigger video diversion strategy. The association is perplexing to pierce divided from building one-off titles tied to particular cinema and radio shows. Instead, in September, Disney will recover Disney Infinity, a diversion height in that business will be means to play with their favorite characters from a Magic Kingdom in a “sandbox” environment.
But Disney clearly thinks differently about a Star Wars franchise, that it acquired final year in a $4 billion squeeze of Lucasfilm. That explains a some-more normal chartering understanding with a EA deal. The financial terms were kept underneath wraps.
For EA, a Star Wars understanding is a possibility for vindication. Two years ago, EA expelled Star Wars: The Old Republic, a large multiplayer diversion that cost an estimated $300 million. At a time, researcher P.J. NcNeaily pronounced it was a “single largest bet” in a career of John Riccitiello, who was afterwards EA’s CEO.
The Old Republic didn’t attract adequate compensate subscribers. In November, EA attempted to deliver a investment by releasing a giveaway version. It’s misleading if EA’s rescue try will work. Riccitiello won’t be around to applaud if it does—he quiescent in Mar when EA warned that it was expected to skip a quarterly numbers.
Disney doesn’t wish to take such risks. That’s because it pulled a block on diversion growth during Lucasfilm. And if a EA understanding doesn’t compensate off, Disney can always let Star Wars-obsessed gamers play with them in Infinity’s open world.