14 DAY TRIAL // The Walt Disney Company has announced that it has taken over comic book company Marvel Entertainment in a deal that has been valued at around 4 billion dollars. This basically means that Mickey Mouse and Wolverine are now buddies and that more than 5,000 characters from comic books might be developed by Disney.
The deal is impressive and will have wide ranging implications for comic book fans, movie goers and, of course, gamers, considering that both Disney and Marvel have been interested in creating videogames based on their intellectual properties.
Lowell Singer, who is the investor relations senior vice president of Disney, has said in a conference call that “On the video game front, [Marvel] have some smart licensing agreements with some of the best video game manufacturers in the business. While we have been steadily moving in the direction of video game integration, we don't rule out the blend of licensing and self-produced and distributed video games.” Another Disney vice president of communication has told Gamasutra that “Activision, THQ, and so on - these are companies that Disney has worked with in the past, and I don't see a huge amount of problems here.”
This means that SEGA, Activision and maybe others will be able to continue developing their videogames using Marvel characters. Expect to see another Spider Man videogame, a new Iron Man game to coincide with the release of the movie sequel, maybe a Thor and a Green Lantern title.
The project that might be in jeopardy will be the Marvel MMO, which is being developed by Gazillion and set to arrive sometime in 2012. The game is set to include a lot of the Marvel heroes and Disney might be interested in taking that project in house, because it impacts so much of the intellectual property acquired. Mickey Mouse might make a cameo appearance in that project, if Disney is looking for an easy cross over.