Disney Infinity, The Walt Disney Company’s prime property in the gaming industry, is on its way out after the company posted a 2 percent year-on-year drop in sales for the second fiscal year.
Launched in 2013, Infinity quickly became a competitor in the emerging toys-to-life gaming industry, where game publishers supplement their software revenue with merchandise sales. Its business model relies on gamers expanding their available content to the game by purchasing character figurines that correspond to in-game content. Infinity followed Activision’s Skylanders franchise, which is still active as of today. Currently, the other active players in this industry are Nintendo’s amiibo and Warner Bros.’ Lego Dimensions.
After its launch, Disney’s franchise has been posting consistent losses throughout the years. Despite releasing additional content from the Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars universes, Infinity has now conceded to its dwindling fanbase.
Disney’s report for its second fiscal year includes a $147 million charge owing to the “discontinuation of our self-published console games business, principally Infinity.” The franchise’s end is set in stone. The $147 million charge includes its own inventory write-down and severance of assets including employees.
Infinity’s canning follows the shuttering of Disney-owned Avalanche Software studio (not to be confused with the studio of the same name which produced Just Cause and Mad Max). The studio’s closing effectively ends Disney’s direct involvement in the gaming industry. They will no longer be releasing their own titles. However, Disney will still be involved in licensing deals which allows other studios to develop content using Disney’s properties, much like EA’s recently released Star Wars Battlefront.
Even after the announcement, Disney and the developers who worked on Infinity are still fully behind the project. The developers will continue to support Infinity and Disney’s properties for the remainder of the year.
There will still be two final content releases for Infinity, including content for the Alice Through the Looking Glass chapters and the Finding Dory playset in June.
This speculates some continued support or, at least, continued maintenance of Infinity’s servers even after Disney stops churning out content. However, Disney is still mum on its plans for Infinity support after everything is all said and done.
Disney Infinity photo by Martin Patino
