After three years of annual releases, ‘Disney Infinity’ is coming to an end. The House of Mouse announced earlier this week that the open world game featuring collectible figures from your favorite Disney, Pixar, Marvel, and ‘Star Wars’ movies would not be receiving any new updates after June following the releases of the ‘Alice Through The Looking Glass’ figures and the ‘Finding Dory’ playset. Although, that’s not even it for the bad news.
In addition to the company shutting down operations on ‘Disney Infinity’, it appears that they are getting out of the self-published console gaming business altogether. While they will still continue to license their properties out to video game publishers to create new games, they won’t be doing it themselves, which is definitely bad news for Avalanche Software. According to Kotaku, Disney is shuttering the windows at the Utah studio responsible for ‘Disney Infinity’ and more. Because of the closure, around 300 employees will be losing their jobs.
In a blog post on Disney Interactive’s website, ’Disney Infinity’ Senior Vice President and General Manager John Blackburn took a moment to thank the fans and people that made the game possible:
“From the beginning, ‘Disney Infinity’ was built for you—our fans—and I wanted to take a moment to thank you not just for your support over the years, but for creating a community that made ‘Disney Infinity’ more than just a game.
Our goal for ‘Disney Infinity’ was to bring the best of Disney storytelling to life in homes around the world, and with your support we accomplished that. We hope you had as much fun playing the game as we had making it.”
It’s really a bummer that ‘Disney Infinity’ will soon be no more. It seemed like the combination of toys and video games would result in a fun experience for consumers that would equal a sizable profit as long as the product remained as good as it was. But Walt Disney Company Chairman and CEO Bob Iger revealed in a call to investors that they “did not have enough confidence in the business in terms of it being stable enough”. I don’t know the figures, but it seems like companies like Sony and Nintendo are in a stable enough place to keep the lights on. Considering that Disney is one of the biggest companies in the world, you would think that they would have the type of pull or power to stay afloat even if the video game industry is changing. Regardless, it will be interesting to see what Disney’s next steps will be and how involved they will be in this medium in the future.
Are you disappointed that ‘Disney Infinity’ has been cancelled? Were you a fan of the game and its toys? Let us know in the comments.
Despite being a “professional writer”, Ben likes run-on sentences and puns far too much. For more of his attempts at being funny and the occasional insightful thought, follow him on Twitter and Instagram.