Disney has selected a senior executive to oversee the company’s metaverse strategy.

Mike White, an employee of the company for more than ten years, has been tasked to lead a group of top executives to develop the firm’s metaverse strategy.

Chief executive Bob Chapek stated in a memo to colleagues published by the BBC that the metaverse is “the next great storytelling frontier” to be explored.

Technology behemoths like Meta, the owner of Facebook, and Microsoft are investing billions of dollars in the metaverse.

The metaverse was described in the memo by Chapek as a “perfect place to pursue our strategic pillars of storytelling excellence, innovation, and audience focus”.

“Teams across the company are exploring this new canvas, and I have been blown away by what I’ve seen,” he said.

White has been chosen as the senior vice president of Next Generation Storytelling and Consumer Experiences of Disney. 

He will distribute resources, investigate collaborations, and foster knowledge sharing on the metaverse in his newly formed role, according to the business.

He’ll also be in charge of a team with expertise in technology, strategy, and narrative.

Disney views the metaverse as the next step in its nearly century-long storytelling history.

“Today, we have an opportunity to connect those universes and create an entirely new paradigm for how audiences experience and engage with our stories,” Chapek said in the memo.

Last Monday, Disney reported that sales at its theme parks in the United States had surged higher than the levels before the pandemic in 2019.

It also revealed that its Disney+ streaming service has gained 11.8 million new subscribers in the last three months of 2021, bringing the total number of subscribers to nearly 130 million globally.

A metaverse is an online universe where people can game, work and chat in a virtual environment, commonly using VR goggles.

Some of the world’s largest IT corporations are touting it as a crucial milestone in the next generation of the internet.

The business formerly known as Facebook has placed the largest wager on the metaverse thus far.

Last year, Facebook renamed itself Meta Platforms and announced plans to invest more than $10 billion in virtual reality software and hardware.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has claimed it was introducing 3D virtual avatars and environments to its Teams messaging system, as part of its push towards the metaverse.

(Adapted from BBC.com)