It has now been a few days since Disney announced the cancellation of Disney Infinity, the closure of Avalanche Software, and that Disney is pulling out of video game publishing. This made no sense at first seeing as Disney was just bragging a few months ago about how Disney Infinity was the best selling Toys-to-Life game on the market. Upon first discovering this news, I was devastated. After all, Disney Infinity has grown to be truly one of the most creative and unique games with a deeply passionate community. Though the more I thought about it, the more it made sense.
Activision’s Skylanders has been on the decline for the past few years and with last year’s inclusion of LEGO Dimensions, the market has begun to get both crowded and fatigued. Even though Disney has been out-performing the competition, they have not necessarily been making a fortune. Sure, Disney Infinity has been making money and is no doubt a success, but the perhaps Disney saw the writing on the wall. After all, it is better to get out while you still can.
Though the news is sad, this is not the end of seeing Disney owned properties in video games. Disney has stated that moving forward, their plan is to license out Disney properties to other publishers. This is similar to Disney’s current deal that EA that allows them licensing to create Star Wars games. Various publishers will now theoretically be able to get the rights to any Disney property. This opens up a whole new world of possibilities for Disney related video games.
We now live in a world where video games based off of licensed properties can be just as good as original IPs (e.g. the Batman Arkham series). Theoretically, Ubisoft could now make the greatest Avengers game the world has ever seen. This realization of new possibilities is exciting and perhaps it is the true silver lining in all of this. After all, Disney does not necessarily have the best track record for making good Disney games, but other companies do. Some of the most beloved Disney related games of all time include Duck Tales, Aladdin, and Kingdom Hearts, all of which were not created by Disney. Without Disney limiting their properties to just themselves, other developers can get their hands on Disney IPs and create more fantastic games.
Of course, the future is currently shaky. Disney Infinity still has a few months of content left before it is officially over and until something new is announced, we will still only have the cancellation of Disney Infinity to dwell on.
Are you excited for the future of Disney video games? Let us know what you think!
no it sucks my son and I had a lot of fun playing together and I put alot of money and I mean alot of money to get all the figures and power disks!!!!
You can still play the game, everything will still work.
I hope who ever they license it out to makes Disney infinity 4.0
I see your point but I don’t know that they were hoarding their licenses for Infinity. They did let someone release battlefront when they were releasing Star Wars on Infinity. it still kind of seems to me that it’s a kick in the pants to the people who thought this would be an ongoing property. I think people would have been disappointed but Disney should have simply phased out the toy aspect of the game. It would have worked and probably been even more profitable by simply using the very popular and profitable mode of digital downloads. If they weren’t casting and storing all of the figures the bottom line would have been significantly lowered. I think that they just needed to act like they were being proactive for stockholders who don’t really pay that much attention to their individual holdings. The projections for the company were too high based on my understanding and the company spent over 140 million dollars to completely shut down a profitable portion of the company. I agree that the toys to life thing is on it’s way out but their response was far and beyond what was necessary from a business standpoint. I think that this was mostly PR for the stockholders with a lot of blah blah, it’s not making enough money.
Sorry, man that was a rant.
I actually agree with a lot of what you said. I was just trying to propose a more optimistic outlook regardless of how plausible it may or may not be. I’m a very disappointed Disney Infinity fan myself, and writing pieces like this is sort of therapeutic for me. At the end of the day, it just puts a smile on my face when I see all the fans come together. Disney Infinity truly has one of the greatest communities out there. I hope you enjoyed reading and thank you for your take. I like hearing what others think!
Thanks for the article and giving me another outlet in which to vent.
Personally I see this as an end to Disney in video games. I mean before Disney Infinity what disney video games did we have? Sure they can license it, but its a question of will any studio want to deal with them? Disney has been on a “we need more money” kick as of late and game companies could see that as too big a hurdle to deal with. Sure Ubisoft could create an epic Avengers game. Question is will they? It’s all high hopes at this point. And I just don’t see anything happening