Collaboration skins are massive for revenue. However, I'm concerned this relationship will force uncool collaborations with Fortnite and reduce it's appeal. Disney has had some flops recently. Long term the trick for Fortnite is to become the most sticky online videogame in history, with most games bleeding audience over time. Epic is more than just Fortnite, but I imagine this deal is entirely about Fortnite.
https://www.dexerto.com/fortnite/every-fortnite-collab-cross...
Disney is definitely at risk of becoming irrelevant with their stale IP.
https://www.ilm.com/vfx/the-mandalorian/
> For season one of the series ILM StageCraft utilized Unreal Engine to perform the real-time render
https://www.ilm.com/vfx/the-mandalorian-season-2/
> The real-time render engine called Helios was specifically developed by ILM engineers
> Ctrl-F "Unreal" - no results
It’s an obvious and huge opportunity for game engine experts to grow their influence.
All other Media and Entertainment companies are either owned by Comcast/AT&T or are Tech companies (netflix, amazon,apple,sony,youtube,tiktokk) that have carved out a chunk of the media and entertainment sector.
Disney is basically on the back foot here, at a time when the attention economy is wrecking chaotic unpredictable havoc on the the media sector.They had to do something cause shareholder revolt has been brewing for a while.
Also, there is still Paramount.
Sony Pictures started in 1987, so that should qualify as old media too.
And there is also Lionsgate.
Disney is by far the biggest and most relevant, though.
Perhaps.
Perhaps, also, it's the old media playbook interpreting what young people want as "jam advertisements in front of them".
>Long term the trick for Fortnite is to become the most sticky online videogame in history
They might achieve this (certainly World of Warcraft holds the title). But I think video games are inherently faddish.
If I had to go one way or the other, I'd bet this is a bit of a desperate move by Disney who are becoming less relevant and whose cash cow (Marvel) is withering.
It's hard to get accurate data, but Fortnite has roughly 100x more users than World of Warcraft. Counterstrike is an even smaller userbase.
WoW and Counterstrike have large loyal fanbases, but I'd be surprised if the age of the average user didn't increase by around 1 year per year.
I bet you can expect more content on fortnite to be with Disney IP; skins, events, maps, everything. It’ll be a great way to promote new movies/TV shows with cross-platform events. Fortnite has already had great luck with this sort of thing, so it makes sense for Disney to want access to it. Maybe you’ll even see IRL Fortnite experiences in theme parks or a Fortnite IP based movie or TV show.
This is what everyone said about Lego, and a bunch of other collabs that came before. It was never true and it's not true now. Turns out people don't want a "virtual world", they want a fun game.
Arguably, there are people who want a "virtual world" -- and they currently just play Roblox to get it. Enough of them like it, that every major retailer stocks "Robux" gift cards
It turns out that when you can't even get audio synced up so that everyone is hearing the same music, the vast majority of the artists bail or drop a pre-recorded set because they weren't informed how a hypothetical live playback mechanism would work, and you don't even have the rights to the game it's based on... you don't have a polished experience, you have a metaverse scam.
“Virtual Disney world” doesn’t mean VR roller coasters, it means Disney themed digital experiences (eg fun games). Disney and Epic have a decent track record building fun and profitable experiences for people.
Nit: It was all of Marvel not just Avengers and I think they did Star Wars too already.
I miss Unreal and Unreal Tournament.
Unfortunately all we get is content now. Even games have started to become pure daily content.
How? EPIC doesn’t have a VR platform at the moment.
The deal still makes sense though. Disney needs to control a video game platform.
2.) Virtual worlds don't need to be VR
The "Fortnite creative engine" is roughly a Virtual Worlds editor / generator along side the Fortnite Virtual Worlds marketplace.
That neither needs nor is easier with NFTs.
Also if the intention is to limit the use of the property to epic games, why not use a plain old database? Nft seems like overkill
[1] Sept 28, 2023 https://www.epicgames.com/site/en-US/news/layoffs-at-epic
Details here and elsewhere: https://www.engadget.com/the-mandalorian-season-two-stagecra...
https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/5/23905082/epic-unreal-engi...
FTFY. They had their own game publishing arm since 1988, Disney Interactive Studios, and owned first-party studios like Avalanche Software, which was sold off to Warner Bros.
They shut it down in 2016.
In both instances, the game end of the deal had peaked already, and there was nowhere to go but down. Nothing a few billion dollars can’t fix, maybe some “new content,” says the business guys.
Meanwhile their product becomes worse by the month. The magic is fading. All the people who made it great move on, not wanting to deal with the business parasites who showed up to squeeze a buck. Repeat.
Take a look at how The Mandalorian (a Disney production) was filmed. Epic Games’ software played a large part.
It goes beyond just film & television. They offer solutions for the automotive industry, aviation simulation industry, mining sims, trucking sims, medical sims, architecture, live broadcast, …
Hmm, I think I might invest if I can!
It means more of what we experience will have to adhere to more of the same rules, patterns, and decisions.
Uniformity is prevailing.
Disney investing in the company that has been the biggest thorn in Apple's side is... interesting. Obviously, the immediate motivation is "we wanna jump on the Fortnite zoomer bandwagon", but I can't help but wonder if Tim Sweeney's days are numbered here.
There's a Wikipedia page dedicated to the subject with extensive references: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potential_acquisition_of_Disne...
Naturally since their CEOs were on the board of the other company and also Pixar.
That said, I would like to see how much equity Tim Sweeney still has left when all is said and done because as far as I know he only had 51.4% prior to today. A controlling share, sure, but somehow I doubt Disney gave him $1.5B for ~1.3%.
He owns a controlling interest in the company.
The announcement video:
Apple and Disney are themselves competitors in the streaming market.
I think an appearance of friendliness mainly came from Steve Jobs, and he’s been gone for a long time now.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/09/bob-iger-remembers-s...
There was some analysis/chatter also that basically Disney's entire strategy the last 5-8 years also was to pump up its valuation as large as possible and then get acquired by Apple.
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/01/apple-previews-new-en...
acquisition day 2: call off all lawsuits.
Unreal tech powers EVERYTHING at Disney now ever since the development of virtual production leveraging real-time rendering.
On top of the that the Fortnite demographic is growing up and videogame based IP moves are making bank (Sonic, Mario, Last of Us).
If the cogs are turning in Bob Iger's head, it's that videogame IPs are the next Marvel/Star Wars.
It makes sense that on the heels of Disney's collaboration with FOX and Warner Bros. Discovery (via ESPN), they would also get into the other market with fans as committed as sports fans.
Considering that the future of TV is streaming and being successful in this market has proven to be no slam dunk (no matter how big you are), Sports/Gaming is the hedge (for those who can swings these deals).
The first thing I could think of as to why is because they use Unreal Engine for their CGI background and effects in TV shows and (perhaps as well) movies.
I do remember seeing BTS of one of their TV shows (likely Star Wars) with giant TV's all round the set which creates backdrops, all in Unreal.
I will admit it is impressive but I noticed camera shots are looking limited. Start of something grander, I guess.
https://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2024/02/disney-epic-interoperable-...
Roblox should start sweating. Then again, so should anyone who's created Disney-themed fan content on Rec Room, VRChat, etc.
Corporate leadership needs to start understanding that once they've saturated the market they need to loosen up or they're at risk of becoming a populist target.
https://www.epicgames.com/site/en-US/news/sony-and-kirkbi-in...
Also monocrhomaticaly violet and with mandatory genderconfusionist characters.
Disney got themselves a board seat, one assumes, and some IP sharing.
I'd hazard a guess at flat. Unity (a peer) got crushed by the market but they also don't have Fortnite which is a money printer and has only gotten bigger.
Keep your Fortnite away from my Kingdom Hearts.
I realize this is from a ground level but: The games getting made by the Unreal Engine today are of such high quality and graphic fidelity.
They've really hit critical mass for the AA and AAA games, and paying the piper is looking like a smarter and smarter investment.
Do film companies write their own editing software, or 3d pipelines, or design and build their own cameras? Some of them, sure. But most of them are purchasing and customizing off-the-shelf solutions. It just makes sense.
A circle is around the island that slowly becomes smaller. If you're out of the circle you take damage. This essentially speeds up the later parts of the game.
Disney can bring a LOT of content, so long as they can actually make it half decent content and not shit the bed like they did with EA.
Same thing with tencent letting Grinding gear games basically make poe 2 which is huge financial risk when they already had a succesful game that could have kept going, just for the sake of making it better for their players over time.
Disney however? yeah, now people will actually see what unrestricted capitalism does to a company, I really hope this is mostly just aimed at the fact that Disney probably uses unreal engine and doesn't want it going down, but the cynic in me thinks that disney as a corporation will try to squeeze as much as they can out of their money.
I bet Zuck never ever played an actual video game in his whole life https://compote.slate.com/images/760b74a3-7156-4dbe-90bd-b02...
There is a growing graveyard of games/devs suffering from bespoke engine woes instead of just using Unreal...
Is there? I can't think of any examples that come to mind. Most indie devs I know that roll their own engine have no regrets. I am curious who comes to mind that says otherwise publicly?
The metaverse is real, and it's called Second Life. Which is a niche. It is a profitable niche. A "cash machine", one of the owners has said. So it stays around. Everybody else in the metaverse space lost money. Now that zero interest rates are over, and there's no more free money, this is even more true. Heavy Disney investment in a general-purpose metaverse seems unlikely. It doesn't fit their IP-based business model.
