Disney Exits Disney Infinity and Toys-to-Life Business

Posted on May 23, 2016

Disney has decided to terminate Disney Infinity in a surprise move. It also closed its Avalanche Software studio. The toys-to-life division was generating a lot of revenues for Disney (over $1 billion in sales) but the entertainment giant appears to be looking more at licensing its characters to other developers.

Disney Infinity was launched in 2013 and it is currently in version 3.0. There are toys-to-life characters from the Marvel, Star Wars and Disney-Pixar. Even though it made money Disney apparently discovered similar money could be made simply from licensing its characters without the cost of developing games. The toys-to-life business may also not have been growing as quickly as Disney had hoped.

Joe Dodson, an analyst with game industry data firm EEDAR, tells Gamasutra, "Disney Infinity did cash in effectively on Disney's licenses. But no matter how well it did, it couldn't be more efficient than letting a third party handle logistics, and just selling the license to that party."

A Disney Interactive post says the last released characters for Disney Infinity will be characters from Alice Through the Looking Glass and Finding Dory. The post says, "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."

Kotaku has some details here about else had been planned for Disney Infinity. Plans included Rogue One, a 4.0 launch and larger 12-inch figures.

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