14 DAY TRIAL // One of the biggest pieces of entertainment news of 2009 was the acquisition of Marvel, the comic book publisher, by The Walt Disney Company for about 4 billion dollars. Not a lot has been announced since then about the relation between the two companies but it seems that some of the first projects following the merger will be based around videogame incarnations of popular Marvel comic superheroes.
Stephen Wadsworth, who is the current president of Disney Interactive Media Group, told Gamasutra that he was talking with those leading Marvel about “high-quality executions” of videogame experiences based around Marvel properties. Graham Hopper, who is the head of Disney Interactive Studios, said that “We're engaged in a lot of conversations with the Marvel team. We would like to do some things in there which would be really high-quality executions of Marvel content.”
Apparently, the idea is that Marvel will be used as the brand that can help Disney break into the more hardcore gaming space built around the PlayStation 3 from Sony and the Xbox 360 from Microsoft. Traditionally, Disney does well when it comes to more casual games, most of them based on its animated properties, but is struggling to get into the AAA release territory.
The problem is that videogames based on Marvel properties are already being created by other companies. SEGA, for example, is building the videogame companion to Iron Man 2, the movie set to be launched in May. It might be some time before Disney actually manages to get back the rights for all the Marvel characters.
Still, it's interesting to see what the company might be able to do with well known characters such as Spider-Man, Iron Man, the cast of the X-Men, Wolverine, the Hulk, the Fantastic Four, Captain America, Daredevil, the Punisher, Ghost Rider or Doctor Strange.