Disney Games has added five new members to its executive leadership team. Two wholly new hires with Blizzard and Blizzard experience have joined as three longtime Disney and Marvel staffers were promoted.
Ray Gresko, a co-lead on development for Overwatch and Diablo 3, has been brought on as Disney Games VP. Chiefly, he’ll team with Epic Games on the pair’s previously announced $1.5 billion collaboration.
Interestingly, Gresko’s hiring is a semi-homecoming. He began in the industry at Lucasfilm working as a programmer on Star Wars: Dark Forces and its sequel.
Marvel Games leader Jay Ong will now lead Disney’s global games licensing business. At Marvel, he helped launch Marvel Snap and the recent Marvel’s Spider-Man games, and he’ll now support all franchises under the Disney banner.
The Disney Games team is further bolstered by Sean Shoptaw (now an executive VP) and ex-Ubisoft developer Bjorn Tornqvist (as games technology VP). Ong, Tornqvist, and Gresko will report directly to Shoptaw.
Taking Ong’s place at Marvel Games is ex-portfolio and strategy lead Haluk Mentes. The division’s future lineup includes Insomniac’s Wolverine title, a Blade game from Dishonored’s Arkane, and NetEase’s recently-revealed Marvel Rivals.
Disney is staying in the games business
Within the last several years, Disney’s games division has been fairly successful. According to Variety, the company’s nine game franchises have earned over $1 billion each in revenue, and surpassed 1.5 billion installs worldwide.
Beyond its Fortnite tie-ins, Disney can tangibly boast the global success from Respawn’s Star Wars Jedi series and Insomniac’s Spider-Man games.
Licensing fees from those titles (namely Star Wars) has led to EA aiming to dial back on external franchises to focus on its own brands. Even so, it has more Star Wars and Marvel games in the works.
Outside of EA, Disney Games’ next big game collaboration (through its Lucasfilm extension) is Indiana Jones & the Great Circle from MachineGames, and Ubisoft’s Star Wars Outlaws.
Update: This story has been changed to clarify Tornqvist previously worked at Ubisoft and is a recent hire to Disney Games after joining in November 2023.