E3 has come and gone, and while we might think of Nintendo or Xbox as the big winners, the true winner of this year’s digital event was Disney. The media conglomerate has Ubisoft Massive making both Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and a new Star Wars MMO, Square Enix making Guardians of the Galaxy, and a new Pirates of the Caribbean crossover with Rare’s Sea of Thieves.
And apparently more are on the way. In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, senior VP of Disney Games Sean Shoptaw said the company is still looking to partner with more studios to make more AAA experiences.
“There’s been a ton of demand for these types of experiences for a long time,” said Shoptaw. “And I think we are starting to serve our fans and gamers in that way. These characters and stories are so meaningful to so many people that we owe it to our consumer base to deliver these types of experiences.”
But rather than throw out a new game for every new film the company produces, Disney is instead working with studios to create original stories based on its IPs. That’s quite the switch from the ’90s and early 2000s where every movie had a tie-in game that often merely retold the same story as the film.
“If we were out retelling films, TV shows and whatever, I think we would fall short on what the opportunity really is in this games space,” Shoptaw added. “So our focus has really been on things that really push our characters and stories to places they had never been pushed before. Still being authentic to who they are, but really being unique to this medium and hopefully delivering experiences in a way that hasn’t been done before.”
Although the focus is on AAA-quality games, Disney isn’t above a good crossover when it makes sense, and the Sea of Thieves/Pirates of the Caribbean crossover makes about as much sense as anything. You can experience an all-new story-driven quest with characters from the franchise–and yes, that includes Jack Sparrow–in the Pirates Life expansion coming to Sea of Thieves tomorrow.
