Electronic Arts, which makes such games as Madden NFL and Apex Legends, said today that it plans to lay off five percent of its employees and will discontinue work on several games. The announcement continues the ongoing downsizing in the gaming and tech space, a development that has seen thousands of jobs lost. EA said the layoffs are part of a broader restructuring aimed at supporting “strategic priorities and growth initiatives,” according to a Tuesday securities filing. EA said in that document that i ...

Disney has reached a deal with Sony under which the latter’s home entertainment division will handle all Disney releases on DVD and Blu-ray as well as all physical media production. It’s the latest sign of the decline of the physical disc trade. Netflix last fall unplugged its foundational disc-by-mail service and revenue from disc sales has continued to decline markedly in the streaming era, as indicated this month in a 2023 recap by the Digital Entertainment Group, a trade consortium. The two studios dec ...

Some of the only Disneyland Resort workers who are not unionized announced today that they are organizing with Actors’ Equity Association. Ironically, they are among the most public-facing of the resort’s employees. Calling themselves “Magic United,” Cast Members who work in the Disneyland resort’s Characters and Parades departments began circulating union authorization cards to 1,700 Cast Members and will seek voluntary recognition from Disney Resort Entertainment when a majority of the workers have signe ...

Disney touted its latest financials, a dividend hike and projects around sports, Fortnite and Taylor Swift as it urged stockholders to elect its board candidates at the upcoming annual meeting — not directors nominated by activist investors that it says will gum up the works as management  “successfully executes a strategic transformation of the company.”  “Disney’s Board of Directors urges shareholders to protect their investment and the future of the Company by voting the WHITE proxy card for only Disney ...

Jeff Bezos sold 12 million shares of Amazon.com Inc. this week, the first time the billionaire has sold the company’s stock since 2021, according to a report by Fortune. The sales netted slightly more than $2 billion, according to a filing. Amazon reported on Feb. 2 that Bezos plans to sell as much as 50 million shares of Amazon over the next 12 months That amount takes advantage of a recent stock surge that’s put Bezos in position of becomingthe world’s richest person. He has $199.5 billion as of Friday, ...

Disney share are up more than 12% in a big move after impressing Wall Street with an earnings beat, solid outlook and deals with Epic Games and Taylor Swift. The numbers hit as two activist shareholders are trying to push outside directors onto Disney’s board claiming the company is floundering strategically and the stock too low. With shareholders set to cast votes at an April 3 annual meeting, the fiscal first quarter results and commentary needed to make a splash, and did. “We would not want to be makin ...

Disney CEO Bob Iger says ESPN‘s bulked-up streaming service will launch in the fall of 2025, or possibly even as soon as late-August of that year. The stand-alone offering will follow this fall’s planned launch of a high-profile joint streaming venture pooling the sports properties of Disney-ESPN, Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox Corp. Like that mini-bundle, the new streaming version of ESPN will offer access to multiple linear feeds of ESPN networks. Unlike the JV’s app, though, it will surround video progr ...

Disney’s profit blew away forecasts although revenue fell a bit short in a key, and solid, earnings report that the company hopes will set the stage for more robust growth. Revenue was flat at $23.5 billion for Disney’s fiscal first quarter ended in December. Diluted EPS (excluding some items) was $1.22, up 23% from the year before. Entertainment DTC operating losses improved by nearly $300 million versus the prior quarter as it heads toward profitability by the end of fiscal 2024. “Just one year ago, we o ...

Disney will unveil fiscal first-quarter financials after market close Wednesday – but this isn’t any earnings report. It’s one that comes with two separate activist shareholders lobbying aggressively to push new directors onto the company’s board because the stock has lagged and, they say, Disney hasn’t made any big moves to create value. One potential game changer came late yesterday with Disney, Warner Bros. and Fox announcing the launch of a new sports streaming joint venture pooling the sports rights o ...

Disney, Fox Sports and Warner Bros. Discovery are teaming up for a sports streaming venture set to launch by the end of the year. Details are still coming into focus about the service, which will pool resources among three of the biggest owners of sports rights. One aspect yet to be determined is how the new venture will affect linear broadcasts. NBCUniversal has recently experimented, with notable success, with streaming-only carriage of high-profile games. The Wall Street Journal had the first report of ...