Under Bob Iger’s leadership, Disney is not in the best shape. To strengthen itself, the firm is considering swallowing up its partner Electronic Arts to produce video games internally.
Through its famous franchises like Star Wars or Marvel heroes, Disney is an important player in video games. In modern video games, we find him as a working partner on many titles: Kingdom Hearts Or The Avengers at Square Enix, games Star Wars at Electronic Arts, Gameloft for Disney Dreamlight Valley Or Speedstormetc.
Sensing certain difficulties in the field of cinema, where the giant has failed to establish itself in 2023 against competitors like barbie Or Oppenheimer, and where the growth of Disney+ is not as strong as expected, some are considering reorienting themselves towards video games. Microsoft’s strategy seems to have inspired.
Buy Electronic Arts?
It’s in an article from Bloomberg that we can learn that Disney management is actively considering a takeover proposal for EA Games.
Iger’s deputies (Editor’s note: Bob Iger, the boss of Disney) are pushing him to consider a bolder transformation of Disney, which would move from the status of a game license holder to that of a gaming giant, for example by acquiring Electronic Arts. But, like everything else, he didn’t commit.
We have been hearing about the idea of a takeover of EA Games by another player for several years. The acquisitions of Zenimax Bethesda and Activision Blizzard by Microsoft gave ideas to EA Games shareholders who could see themselves making a nice profit with a resale of one of the video game champions.
As if to better support a possible proposal, EA restructured itself in June 2023 to separate into two entities: EA Sports for all sports-related video games and EA Entertainment for all other games. We can imagine that Disney would only be interested in purchasing EA Entertainment, which currently develops Star Wars games for the cinema giant. EA Sports could then be resold to another publisher keen to improve its catalog in the field. Maybe 2K, already known for its basketball and F1 simulations.
At this stage, there does not seem to have been any discussion between Disney and EA for a possible takeover and Bob Iger, the boss of Disney, does not seem convinced by this strategy. However, its position is becoming more and more difficult as the cinema giant goes through choppy waters. In this period of concentration of players in video games and while EA undoubtedly wants to sell itself, another giant should not be able to jump at the opportunity. Amazon had also been approached, there was a time to get their hands on EA.
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