Disney adds Blizzard and Marvel Games alums to exec leadership

Image via Insomniac Games/PlayStation.

Disney Games has added five new members to its executive leadership team. A wholly new hire with Blizzard experience has joined as four 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 executive VP) and Bjorn Tornqvist (games technology VP). Ong, Tornqvist, and Gresko will report directly to Ong.

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 businessWithin 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.

About the Author(s)

Contributing Editor, GameDeveloper.com

A Kansas City, MO native, Justin Carter has written for numerous sites including IGN, Polygon, and SyFy Wire. In addition to Game Developer, his writing can be found at io9 over on Gizmodo. Don’t ask him about how much gum he’s had, because the answer will be more than he’s willing to admit.