An internal email sent from Disney CEO Bob Iger reveals that The Walt Disney Compnay will be merging its digital media group with its video gaming division to create a new unit called Disney Interactive Media Group. Walt Disney Internet Group currently manages Club Penguin and Disney.com among others. While Disney Interactive Studios mostly makes video games for Disney brands. Although they both do quite a bit more than that and there is often considerable confusion about exactly what they do.
I’ve been waiting for this move to happen for a long time. There is a ton of potential cost savings here, not to mention making it easier for one hand to know what the other is doing. It also makes sense to have one reporting structure for this group since so much of Bob Iger’s strategy for the future depends on being able to leverage these technologies and media to tell quality Disney stories.
My one complaint, DIMG isn’t as fun an acronym as WDIG. Just change the “I” from Internet to Interactive and there you go. The media is implied.
(via AllThingsD and CNNmoney)
I’ve been waiting for this, too. I don’t know the internal cultures of those parts of Disney, so I don’t know if it will work as good in reality as it looks on paper.
The corporation is a large one and it has some distinct silos that are barriers to making full use of all resources.
What I means is that writers within Disney should be free to tell stories in any medium the company supports. Likewise, animators, programmers, engineers, illustrators, composers, sculptors, etc. should have their skills and talents put to use wherever the corporation can use them.
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