Gamertell

Bob Iger, CEO of Walt Disney Co. has revealed plans for the company to try and grab a bigger piece of the video game pie.

Walt Disney Co. plans to transition its tried and true method for developing its music devision, which is reported to produce $100,000,000 in annual income, to the video game industry. The New York Postreports that, “In games, Disney has visions of even bigger dollars. Disney has been steadily increasing its spending on video game development, rising from around $100 million in 2006 to a projected $175 million in 2008. Within five years Disney reportedly is looking to spend as much as $350 million.”

Iger is reported to have told investors, “We intend to use [a multi-platform approach] to do exactly what we did in the music business to our video games business, but on a much larger scale.” And with the successes of the High School Musical and Hannah Montana soundtracks, this move could shape up to be big.

It is clear that the Disney CEO believes so. In 2007, Disney acquired several game studios and shipped 20 million published and licensed games. In regards to the Disney giant’s ability to enter the video game market Iger commented:

“We are a publishing company on the outside of the video games business. But where they [other companies] may not have a cable channel, or a movie company, or even a record business, or a radio business, or online - we have all of those. We intend to use them fully.”

I’d say they’ll be a major player. I just hope they don’t ship a bunch of low quality games as has been the trend in the past.

Via [New York Post]