Midori has revealed that Kingdom Hearts is expected to appear in Fortnite.
On the surface, this looks like this has something to do with the Kingdom Hearts games coming to Steam, but it’s actually been in the works for a while. Midori first explained that there are Kingdom Hearts collaborations in the works with other video games.
And then, she confirmed that Fortnite was one of those games that was part of this initiative, but she doesn’t have more information on this regard.
Now, the Kingdom Hearts games coming to Steam were originally published on Epic Game Store. Based on what we know in public, this looked like it was a deal that Square Enix brokered with Epic. Square Enix made Kingdom Hearts III on Unreal 4, and Kingdom Hearts IV is in development in Unreal 5.
It certainly seemed like Sony’s ownership of some shares in Epic could have had something to do with the deal, since the franchise was originally PlayStation exclusive. But as we know, the Kingdom Hearts games were also published on Xbox and Nintendo Switch. Nintendo fans were not satisfied with the cloud versions of those games, but It can’t be said that Square Enix didn’t find a way to bring the games over.
There is a bigger reason that this crossover could be happening, and may even be getting expedited now. That would be the fact that Disney acquired a $ 1.5 billion stake in Epic Games, making them a bigger shareholder over Sony. While Tim Sweeney maintains the controlling majority interest as shareholder, this investment gives Disney a bigger share in Epic’s profits.
Of course, this incentivizes Disney to bring their IP closer to Epic. Having future Disney IP games made on Unreal Engine or by Epic Games is a possibility, but in the short term, they can just bring those IPs to Epic’s going concern, Fortnite.
And before this deal, a lot of Disney IP already made the crossover jump to Fortnite, including their biggest IPs in Star Wars and Marvel. Contrary to what most fans think, Disney owns Kingdom Hearts as an IP, and they could have been doing more than making games with Square Enix with it, for years.
We reported the rumor that Disney is planning to make a Kingdom Hearts movie or series, but given that movies and shows also take the same five years it takes to get a video game off the ground, the obvious quick way to make money out of this is to just bring Kingdom Hearts to Fortnite. We will see if Disney or Square Enix decides to announce this, but if they do it now, we may still have to wait a few months to actually see it happen.
