- Joined
- Mar 3, 2018
- Messages
- 1,713
EA has an exclusive license to produce Star Wars games, but there's been plenty of outrage on the internet focused on what they've chosen to do with that license. Multiple promising projects, like another KOTOR or a "Star Wars Uncharted" game have allegedly been canceled or turned down, while other high profile releases like the latest Battlefront launched with their own controversy. The Rogue One writer even blasted EA recently, but apparently, Disney's executives don't feel the same way. During their Q1 2019 Earnings Conference Call, Disney's CEO mentioned that company has a "good relationship" with EA, and reiterated that they'll continue to outsource game development and publishing to other companies. KitGuru, who spotted the EA bit, notes that there are 4 years left on EA's Star Wars license. At their own conference call, EA said "You'll start to see in the next few months glimpses of the Star Wars game, and I think you'll be blown away by what you see. We played 20-plus minutes of it last week, and it is exceptional in terms of its level of polished depth and living inside of the Star Wars world as a Jedi. I think people will be blown away by it," but they didn't specifically comment on their partnership with Disney.
Robert Iger -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer: In the video game business, we're obviously mindful of the size of the business. Over the years, as you know, we've tried our hand at self-publishing. We've bought companies. We've sold companies. We've bought developers. We've closed developers. We've found over the years that we haven't been particularly good at the self-publishing side, but we've been great at the licensing side, which obviously doesn't require that much allocation of capital. Since we're allocating capital in other directions, even though we have the ability to allocate the capital, we've just decided that the best place for us to be in that space is licensing and not publishing. We've had good relationships with some of those we're licensing to, notably EA and the relationship on the "Star Wars" properties. We're going to continue to stay on that side of the business and put our capital elsewhere. We're good at making movies and television shows and theme park attractions and cruise ships and the like. We've just never managed to demonstrate much skill on the publishing side of games.
Robert Iger -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer: In the video game business, we're obviously mindful of the size of the business. Over the years, as you know, we've tried our hand at self-publishing. We've bought companies. We've sold companies. We've bought developers. We've closed developers. We've found over the years that we haven't been particularly good at the self-publishing side, but we've been great at the licensing side, which obviously doesn't require that much allocation of capital. Since we're allocating capital in other directions, even though we have the ability to allocate the capital, we've just decided that the best place for us to be in that space is licensing and not publishing. We've had good relationships with some of those we're licensing to, notably EA and the relationship on the "Star Wars" properties. We're going to continue to stay on that side of the business and put our capital elsewhere. We're good at making movies and television shows and theme park attractions and cruise ships and the like. We've just never managed to demonstrate much skill on the publishing side of games.