Playdom CEO John Pleasants Named Disney Interactive President
Disney signaled over the weekend that it’s ready to make social games an important part of its online strategy, appointing Playdom CEO John Pleasants co-president of its interactive division along with former Yahoo vice president Jimmy Pitaro.
Only two months have passed since Disney acquired Playdom for $763 million, but Pleasants is being given an important role, with responsibility over Disney’s entire video gaming business, including console, online and now social elements. Pitaro, meanwhile, will oversee the non-game elements of Disney Interactive Studios.
Rather than taking over a stable, well-defined role, Pleasants will likely be expected to shake up the interactive business, which Bloomberg points out is Disney’s only money-losing division.
However, Pleasants also won’t be moving into a totally corporate position — he’ll instead stay at Playdom’s Mountain View headquarters, from which he’ll run that company as well as Club Penguin, Tapulous and other acquired companies.
In the social game market, most have been paying close attention to Disney since it picked up Playdom. Pleasant’s move up chain of command should serve as a signal of much more to come from Disney — although future moves likely won’t be confined to Facebook, as CEO Bob Iger suggested during Disney’s August earnings call. Exactly what that will mean remains to be seen.
October 4th, 2010 at 4:00 pm
I was a fan of Playdom until they sold out. Damn shame.
December 26th, 2010 at 11:20 pm
i dont know where else to go. playdom has screwed many loyal players of mobsters by showing favorites,in oct there was a script that hacked many people . and playdom made up for it vby giving those people trillions of dollars of mobster cash screwing the rest of us i messaged playdom 11 times even took them to bbb still there responce was yeah we gave people large amounts of cassh which we can no longer do.i know who got the money people who buy favore points huh well i have in the past and never will again i am a godfather on that game and will take my family of 58 people to galaxy wars thanks for nothing you wasted three years of my time and my familys by playing favorites
April 26th, 2011 at 10:03 am
[...] Schappert joined EA in 2009 as COO after leaving Microsoft’s Xbox Live team where he served as a corporate vice president. Prior to that, Schappert was a longtime EA executive and founded its Tiburon studio, home of EA Sports Madden NFL franchise. In the Microsoft-to-EA move, Schappert replaced John Pleasants, who went on to Playdom and later became president of Disney Interactive. [...]