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Disney to take $1.5B stake in Epic Games

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Re: Disney to take $1.5B stake in Epic Games

#221
post #78

Epic games has the potential to be the virtual Disney World - just available to everyone on the planet instead of those with enough money to visit a park IRL. Disney has a great flywheel where their IP drives content, toys, and experiences. This is just the latest experience, and it’s something they can’t build themselves. I bet you can expect more content on fortnite to be with Disney IP; skins, events, maps, everyt…

> Epic games has the potential to be the virtual Disney World This is what everyone said about Lego, and a bunch of other collabs that came before. It was never true and it's not true now. Turns out people don't want a "virtual world", they want a fun game.

lego, as in Minecraft? Roblox? nobody wants that.

Re: Disney to take $1.5B stake in Epic Games

#222
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the same reaction 20 years ago to Kingdom Hearts. Disney is definitely at risk of becoming irrelevant with their stale IP.

At risk? They haven’t had hit movie for years. They have destroyed just about everything they’ve touched, from Indiana Jones to Star Wars to Snow White.

Avatar 2 came out just over a year ago is one of the highest grossing movies of all time.

Re: Disney to take $1.5B stake in Epic Games

#224
post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See their net income and profit margin trends: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/DIS/disney/net-inc... https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/DIS/disney/profit-... Doesn’t look so hot for the last 4 or 5 years. They went from earning near $10B per year to less than $3B per year.

If you ignore the Covid drop, the trend change seems to start in 2019 when they bought Century Fox.

I’m not sure what the exact cause is, but for some reason, they lose billions on streaming (page 24):

https://thewaltdisneycompany.com/app/uploads/2023/11/Q4_FY23...

Re: Disney to take $1.5B stake in Epic Games

#226

Hilarious. A long time ally of Apple will invest in a company hell bent (and somewhat righteously so) knee capping Apple.

Ally of Apple in what way? Do they give each other favorable deals or work closely together on any important projects? I haven’t heard of anything major along those lines. I think an appearance of friendliness mainly came from Steve Jobs, and he’s been gone for a long time now.

Disney is basically a launch partner for the Vision Pro. They’re going to bring content to it to showcase its abilities iirc.

Re: Disney to take $1.5B stake in Epic Games

#227
post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how much did those movies cost to make? I think the movies you are referring to were expecting to make 500m or more. They needed to make about 500 to break even! Disney said have some successes last year. But they aren't as impressive as you might think

Box Office is not the yardstick disney uses, that's just the first phase of the disney wheel. They make oodles of money in merchandise and theme park content that's based on the same (expensive) IP as the movie. When they don't break even on the movie, they'll generally break even or make money on the IP behind the movie.

Here's the problem with that analysis, how do you attribute revenue to a specific movie? Will people attend the theme parks or spend more at them because of [movie X]? It's the same problem you have with streaming. Will people subscribe or stay subscribed to D+ longer because of [movie X]?

Until you can answer one or both in a repeatable, predictable way, we can wave our hands and say "it makes money later!" or "it doesn't make money later!" and neither is provable.

One other aspect that we CAN prove: streaming kills DVD sales. That's a revenue stream that is gone and won't be coming back so we have yet another deficit to fill.

Until then, Box Office and merchandising are the ONLY numbers that we, analysts, and stockholders can point at where "You put in $X and got out $Y" for their movie business. And as of right now, that puts Disney's 2023 numbers deeply negative.

Re: Disney to take $1.5B stake in Epic Games

#229

I worked on a UT99 mod back in the day and was invited to the Raleigh office back in 2003 or so after our artist was hired by them. He still works there. Hard to believe how far the company has come.

Still one of the greatest games of all time.

That couldn't be bought other than physical copies if there are any left.

Re: Disney to take $1.5B stake in Epic Games

#230
post #73

Well now.. it is not like I need another reason to avoid Epic, but.. I am obviously not the target demographic here. I personally think, from Disney's perspective, this is not a wrong move to make.

I find the prospect of Disney characters shooting at each other with guns mildly disturbing.

better avoid the marvel movies and star wars then
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