“The universe will allow consumers to “play, watch, store and interact with content material, characters and tales from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, Avatar and extra”.

San Francisco: Entertainment big Disney has mentioned that it’ll make investments $1.5 billion to accumulate an fairness stake within the ‘Fortnite’ maker Epic Games and work with the sport developer to create a “games and entertainment universe”.

The universe will permit customers to “play, watch, shop and engage with content, characters and stories from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, Avatar and more”.

“Our exciting new relationship with Epic Games will bring together Disney’s beloved brands and franchises with the hugely popular Fortnite in a transformational new games and entertainment universe,” Robert A. Iger, CEO, The Walt Disney Company, mentioned in an announcement.

“This marks Disney’s biggest entry ever into the world of games and offers significant opportunities for growth and expansion,” he added.

The partnership comes after Disney’s profitable licensing of characters reminiscent of Spider-Man for blockbuster video video games. Disney additionally collaborated with Epic to carry characters from Marvel, Star Wars, “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” “Tron,” and extra to Fortnite.

“Disney was one of the first companies to believe in the potential of bringing their worlds together with ours in Fortnite,” mentioned Tim Sweeney, CEO and Founder, Epic Games.

“Now we’re collaborating on something entirely new to build a persistent, open and interoperable ecosystem that will bring together the Disney and Fortnite communities,” he added.

Moreover, the leisure big talked about that the 2 corporations have already engaged tons of of thousands and thousands of gamers by Fortnite content material, together with the Marvel ‘Nexus War with Galactus’, which drew over 15.3 million concurrent gamers.

Apart from Fortnite, Epic Games is well-known for difficult Apple and Google in courtroom to power them to cut back their app retailer charges.