Disney has tapped John Drake as its vice president of business development and licensing for games. Until just recently, Drake headed up PlayStation’s portfolio strategy and content acquisitions team, and had been with the company for 5 years.
Drake announced on Twitter that he was departing PlayStation a few weeks back, and broke the news that he’d be stepping into a VP role over at Disney earlier today.
In those tweets, he explains that his new position sees him working to match Disney’s expansive library of franchises with developers and publishers interested in using those properties in games.
Disney has long been scooping up more and more of the entertainment business, bringing properties like Marvel and Star Wars under its ownership in the last several years, as well as the more recent acquisition of most of 21st Century Fox.
Bringing Drake on board also serves to back up Disney CEO Bob Iger’s comments from earlier this year that the company’s video game fortunes lie in licensing its properties out to external developers, rather than publishing games.