NBCU's game leaders: Left to right: Pete Wanat, Tim FitzRandolph, Bill Kispert, Chris Heatherly, Jim Molinets, and Fabian Schonholz.
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Former Disney leader will guide NBCUniversal into mobile games

Disney has staged a big retreat from internally-built games. And NBCUniversal is going to benefit from that, as it has hired Disney’s former mobile games leader Chris Heatherly to lead a new mobile game and virtual reality publishing group.

It’s a recognition that mobile games, which are expected to grow to $46.2 billion in 2017, are a big business and that the film and TV businesses aren’t growing like they once were.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.