Disney Won't Kill Marvel Game Licensing... For Now

Disney has bought Marvel Comics. It's true. Following this announcement , Disney has said that we may be looking at a mixture of licensed and "self-produced" games from the Marvel stable in the future. It will also be looking closely at licensing deals as they expire.

Speaking in a conference call to analysts, Bob Iger, president and CEO of Disney, said, "On the video games front, they have what we see as smart licensing agreements with some of the best video game manufacturers in the business and while we have been steadily moving in a vertically integrated direction, we don't rule out a blend of licensed games as well as self-produced and self-distributed (games)."

Sounds good for companies that hold Marvel licenses so far, right? Well... there's an ominous note hanging over them. "What's nice about this is that as some of these deals near expiration we have the luxury of at that time considering what's best for the company. Both from a financial perspective, a quality perspective and an exposure perspective", Iger went on.

Currently the majority of Marvel's games licenses are held by Activision (which has Ultimate Alliance 2 coming up and had X-Men Origins: Wolverine earlier in the year) and SEGA (which has Iron Man 2 on the way, as well as the rights to Captain America, Thor and The Hulk).

The Marvel/Disney deal was announced yesterday. Disney will acquire the comics publisher for roughly $4 billion.

^{Source: Disney Webcast}