At DICE’s first keynote session, Disney Interactive Entertainment president Stephen Wadsworth revealed the company’s direction this year, and the new games that will bring them there.
Stephen Wadsworth, the president of the Disney Interactive Media Group closed the first day of DICE 2010 with a keynote about his company’s evolving audience and the games being made to satiate them.
Wadsworth described the new audience currently consuming its interactive products. Today’s audience consists of master multi-taskers, media sponges, multiple platform users (including what Wadsworth dubbed “PlayStation Arc,” adding more fuel to that fire) and seamless communicators who are in immediate need of content, but also willing to share. This has led to a change in the way the company works to earn money from them, moving the traditional “Acquire, Monetize, Engage” dynamic to one where customers are brought in with engaging products, then given the opportunity to pay for the product via premium content or subscriptions. However, the core Disney values are still at the center products, as Wadsworth stated “Story and characters form the basis and heart of our products today.” In order to prove this, Wadsworth went through the long list of licenses the company, including Toy Story 3, Pirates of the Carribean: Armada of the Damned, Tron Evolution, and Epic Mickey. Wadsworth also brought up Disney’s recent acquisition of comic book company Marvel, providing more proof that Disney may start publishing superhero games sooner rather than later.
Wadsworth also discussed the synergy between its virtual world-based IPs with other products. The company has a suite of multi-player virtual worlds, including Pirates of the Carribean, Toontown, the upcoming World of Cars, which is based on the Pixar film. The main focus of this part of the keynote, however, was how the acquisition of Club Penguin strengthened their focus, as the developer’s tireless dedication to customer service stood in stark contrast to Disney’s Toontown, which used to have outsourced customer service and would disregard customer suggestions as unsolicited concept pitches. Club Penguin was also strengthened by having a successful tie-in on the Nintendo DS. Wadsworth stated that the company would be announcing a new Club Penguin game at DICE this week, featuring even deeper integration with the game’s online world. GamePro will keep you updated on this new game, as well as the rest of the news coming out of DICE over the next few days.