CES: Disney’s New Virtual Worlds

At the Consumer Electronics Show, Disney’s CEO Bob Iger announced plans for creating Massively Multi-player Online games based on many Disney properties. He announced the possibility of living in the world of Toy Story, racing in the world of Cars, having superpowers like the Incredibles, entering the world of the Disney Princesses, and entering a world of Pirates. He also mentioned a little thing called Narnia…

Disney’s CEO Bob Iger told the assembled crowd at his CES keynote address yesterday that the company plans to bring it’s hottest properties to ‘the virtual realm’ with the first major MMO-game being Pirates of the Caribbean due to launch later this year.

Iger told the CES audience, “We plan to build more virtual worlds like Pirates, based on a broad range of our properties, where we will invite our guests to become a part of our stories. Imagine living in Buzz and Woody’s toy universe; joining an epic adventure in the lands of Narnia; racing Lightning McQueen through Radiator Springs; sharing the superpowers of the Incredibles or entering the magic world of Cinderella and the other Disney princesses.”

SPOnG has just spoken with Sandra van Vreedendaal, Disney’s corporate communications director for Europe, who was cagier about the keynote, telling us, “Bob’s speech yesterday was more about imagining where we are going in the future. Of course, we have many IPs [Intellectual Properties] such as Toy Story, Cars, Narnia, The Incredibles. We are imagining that these things could be possible but at the moment have no firm plans.”