Disney has officially confirmed what longtime fans have suspected for years: Kingdom Hearts is a billion-dollar franchise. The announcement landed this week ahead of a dedicated D23 Deep Dive panel streaming tonight — and Singapore fans can catch it live on Sunday morning.
Kingdom Hearts Hits the Billion-Dollar Mark
Sean Shoptaw, Executive Vice President of Global Games and Digital Entertainment at Disney, revealed in an official blog post that the company’s games division now spans nine franchises that have each cleared $1 billion in retail revenue. Kingdom Hearts is one of them — sitting in the Disney & Pixar Games label alongside Marvel Strike Force and titles from Lucasfilm Games and 20th Century Games.
Shoptaw noted that “games have become such an important part of the broader Disney landscape” and are increasingly “the first place audiences discover Disney’s characters and worlds.” Disney Games as a whole drove an estimated $3.5 billion in annual consumer spending in recent years, surpassing $4 billion in the most recent fiscal year. It’s a remarkable figure for a series that began as an unlikely crossover between Square Enix’s Final Fantasy DNA and Disney’s beloved animated worlds back in 2002.
Watch the D23 Deep Dive Live — Sunday Morning SGT
The timing of the billion-dollar reveal is no accident. Disney is hosting a “Deep Dive Into Kingdom Hearts” panel at its D23 fan event in Anaheim today, August 15, at 4:30 PM PT — that’s 7:30 AM SGT on Sunday, 16 August. The hour-long session will be livestreamed on the official Kingdom Hearts YouTube channel and the Disney YouTube channel, so Singapore fans can set an alarm and tune in from the couch.
Note: the panel may not be saved as a VOD after the stream, so watch live if you can. If it is archived, we’ll update this post.
What to Expect From the Panel
The panel commemorates the series’ 25th anniversary (the actual milestone falls in 2027) and is confirmed to feature a behind-the-scenes look at how the games come together. Panellists include:
- Nana Gadd — Disney & Pixar Games
- Tai Yasue — co-director at Square Enix
- Haley Joel Osment — voice of Sora (and Vanitas)
- David Gallagher — voice of Riku
- Renée Johnson — Disney character voices
Disney has not confirmed outright that Kingdom Hearts IV will appear, but with Tai Yasue on stage, the series co-director in tow, and the franchise’s biggest financial milestone as backdrop, anticipation among fans is understandably high. Speculation is running hot on whether a new KH4 trailer — possibly showing English voice acting and the first confirmed Disney worlds — could drop during the stream.
The Switch 2 Collection Is Still on Track for October
For Singapore fans who haven’t played the older entries, good news: the Kingdom Hearts Collection [I~III] — covering HD 1.5+2.5 ReMIX, HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue, and Kingdom Hearts III + Re Mind — is still confirmed for Nintendo Switch 2 on 8 October 2026, alongside PS5 and Xbox Series X|S releases. As we covered when the collection was confirmed for Switch 2, the original Switch versions will run via cloud streaming. This is the complete, native way to get the full saga on Nintendo hardware before KH4 arrives.
Set that alarm for Sunday morning. If anything big drops from the D23 stage, we’ll have the breakdown up shortly after. Check in on our game news section for the follow-up.