Disney will launch characters in Fortnite – Kommersant FM
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Disney will be involved in games; the animation studio announced that it plans to invest $1.5 billion into Epic Games to create a gaming universe. Companies want to create a new gaming and entertainment universe based on the Fortnite game. It may feature characters from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars and Avatar stories. Users of the project will be able not only to play, but also to make purchases, as well as “interact with the content” that fills the game.
All this is going to be developed on the Unreal Engine; video game expert Alexander Kuzmenko considers this deal promising for users: “Epic is one of the main representatives of the global modern gaming industry. It is valued at billions of dollars.
Collaborating with Disney is, in general, a logical step, because Disney does not have its own expertise in what is related to online and virtual worlds, while Epic does. However, Epic does not have the same characters and franchises that Disney does. Everything from Pixar to James Cameron’s Avatar is there.
Using the Unreal Engine, it will be possible to create a virtual world where all these characters will unite into a kind of metaverse; this is a breakthrough in the world of modern entertainment media. I think this collaboration will go much deeper than the usual Fortnite expansion.”
The Fortnite game set a world record in early December 2023; according to the Fortnite.GG portal, 11.5 million people started the game at the same time. And in November last year, over 100 million unique users were recorded. The share that Disney will receive in Epic Games is still unknown due to the lack of public value of the gaming platform. BCS World of Investments analyst Denis Buivolov believes that we are talking about acquiring approximately 10%:
“This is an exciting step for both companies. For Disney, this is an opportunity to enter the video game market; it previously tried to do this, but was unsuccessful and only licensed the rights to create its games to other studios. Now we are facing a new milestone in the history of Disney’s development, when they plan to enter the video game direction, in this case they got a good deal with Epic Games.
They’ve had previous partnerships on Fortnite, bringing their characters into the games, but the current partnership is something more. I think that the partnership with Epic Games is interesting not because it has Fortnite, but because it has the Unreal Engine 5 game engine, something interesting can be created based on it.
If we talk about risks, I don’t see any for Disney at the moment, because the transaction amount is not that large. For Epic Games, the only risk in this story is that the company will focus more attention on Disney, meaning there will be less time for other projects.”
This is not the first time Epic Games has collaborated with large companies. Thus, in 2022, Sony and the Kirkbi holding, which owns the Lego group, invested in the gaming platform. Then each of them invested $1 billion in the gaming platform.
Everything is clear with us – Telegram channel “Kommersant FM”.
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