One of the most frequent questions I'm seeing around is:
Disney own Marvel, why would they want CoH?
Well, most corporations buy multiple companies in the same 'vertical' (market) because that way, they can be their own competition, so when one of their properties/companies doesn't get the deal, another one they own probably does. It allows you to re-target your marketing so that for people to whom one of your businesses wasn't appealing, or a match, you have another bite of the cherry, with something aimed at another demographic.
Here in the UK, most of the big department stores, and clothing stores are owned by one of three corporations. I mean that between those three, they own about 80% of that style of store in every high street.
To give a better example though, let me tell you about 2 of the Dixon group of electronic stores, Dixons and Currys. The weird thing about these two is that they were owned by the same corporation, yet the stores would almost always be placed within 50 yards of each other, frequently right across the street, or just a couple of doors along. I mean they went way out of their way to deliberately make these stores compete with each other. Do you know why?
Its because consumer electronics are a market where people always want to look around, shop around, and compare prices. There was never any doubt that the customers were going to look at more than one store, ever. What the Dixons group were doing was brilliant. They were making it so easy to shop around and compare both of their stores together, that you may well not bother at all looking at a third store several blocks away. But you would always go to where you could so easily compare 2 stores in one go.
Marvel is never going to appeal to everyone. One of the major limitations with Marvel is that its lore is so well known, so studied, and so passionately cared about that it just can't be opened to everyone to re-write. Marvel can never let you kill off Spiderman, nor let you write a history for your character that impacts on one of their icons that is worth billions in film and publishing to them. So, with Marvel you always have to either play their characters in their way, fixed to their story ... or you have to be some character so insignificant to the actual lore of Marvel that you won't change anything. Like how DCUO makes you a sidekick to the iconic characters, but ultimately rather impotent to the story/setting.
CoH doesn't have that limitation, and indeed, killing off Statesman was a brilliant message that your character can be the ultimate hero, or ultimate nemesis. You can prove to Recluse that you can kill him, and you can out-live Statesman, becoming the leading character of your own version of the world. That is phenomenal, and we know it.
People who don't like Marvel charcaters, lore, or simply dislike being so limited by existing lore, currently go to a competitor of Disney. By buying up CoH, Disney can effectively own the entire spectrum of superhero gaming other than the most ardent DC fans. The fact they own Marvel is not a flaw in our plan, its the added strength to it. It actually makes more sense to buy CoH because they already own Marvel.
