A brand new Bloomberg report reveals Disney executives wish to get additional into video games. Their answer? Purchase Digital Arts. 

Sources chatting with the outlet say executives beneath present CEO Bob Iger need him to carry out a “bolder transformation” of Disney’s online game division. Slightly than license out properties like Marvel and Star Wars, it should purchase up a writer with intensive recreation expertise, and EA particularly was talked about. 

Iger is claimed to be “noncommittal” in regards to the matter, however the two corporations have had a considerably steady relationship over the past eight years. In 2013, EA secured unique rights to make “core” Star Wars video games, leading to a reboot of the Star Wars Battlefront sequence from DICE and ultimately Respawn Leisure’s Star Wars Jedi sequence.

Regardless of the controversial reception of Star Wars Battlefront II (2017), the success of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order led to EA making extra video games video games with the license (like 2020’s Star Wars: Squadrons), whereas letting different builders corresponding to Ubisoft additionally do initiatives for the sequence. 

On the similar time, a handful of Star Wars video games beneath EA had been canceled, corresponding to one from EA Vancouver—often known as Challenge Orca and initially from Visceral Video games—and a Battlefront spinoff.

At present, EA’s licensing relationship with Disney additionally extends to Marvel. Its subsidiaries Motive Studio and Cliffhanger Video games are presently creating single-player initiatives for plenty of Marvel characters.

Whether or not or not EA does find yourself a Disney subsidiary, this is not the primary time the writer has been marked as an acquisition goal. Final 12 months, NBCUniversal was reportedly wanting to buy the corporate, however these plans fell aside. An analogous rumor involved the developer being acquired by Amazon.

In response to NBCUniversal’s particular acquisition, EA CEO Andrew Wilson refuted these claims, saying the corporate was in an “unbelievable place.” He even bragged that the corporate was on observe to be “the most important stand-alone impartial developer and writer of interactive leisure on this planet.”

On the time, his statements had been earlier than EA canceled a pair of cellular video games, killed a single-player spinoff for Apex Legends, and laid off a whole bunch of employees after “sturdy” income. At present, the writer is being sued for allegedly shortchanging the severance of not too long ago laid off BioWare workers.