Disney has decided to end development on its “Disney Infinity” line of video games — and it’s taking a $147 million charge to get out of the video game publishing business entirely, and as quickly as possible. The news was announced on Disney’s quarterly earnings call, as reported by CNBC, citing “lower results” for the “Disney Infinity” line. The end of “Disney Infinity” is also the end of Disney’s video game publishing business entirely.Disney posted a quarter that missed Wall Street estimates on both the top and bottom lines.
In “Disney Infinity,”action figures are drawn from Disney’s huge stable of massive media properties, including the animated movies, Star Wars, Pixar, and Marvel Super Heroes. Place your Mickey Mouse Infinity figure (which retails for $14) on the game’s included “Infinity Base,” and Mickey Mouse shall appear. At one time, Disney said “Disney Infinity” was a $1 billion business. While a recently-released “Marvel Battlegrounds” playset for the game was not warmly received by critics, a blog post promises that a new “Finding Dory” playset and characters from the new “Alice: Through the Looking Glass” movie will still make it to stores this year.
“We hope you had as much fun playing the game as we had making it,” writes Disney Infinity boss John Blackburn in that blog entry.
“Disney Infinity” was known in the business as a “toys-to-life” title, which refers to that category of video games where you buy real-life action figures that you can then play with on the screen. Its main “toys-to-life” competitors were “Skylanders” and “Lego Dimensions.” While “Disney Infinity” had been a hit within that market, it seems that the “toys-to-life” craze is coming closer to an end with this news.
