We officially know the first casualty in the toys-to-life wars...and the first company forced out of contention might come as a bit of a surprise. After just three years on the market, Disney has announced plans to scrap its Disney Infinity product line and shutdown Avalanche Software, leaving more than 300 people without work and fans on a mad dash to grab whatever Disney Infinity merchandise they’d like to add to their collections before it all disappears from stores.
The news might come as a bit of shock, considering it wasn’t all that long ago that Disney was tooting its own horn as the most popular toys-to-life property on the market. At the beginning of 2016, sales of Disney Infinity merchandise was outpacing those of Skylanders (Activision), Lego Dimensions (WB Games) and Nintendo’s Amiibo products But those sales apparently weren’t enough to convince Disney that the Infinity franchise was a worthwhile investment. And follow up comments from CEO Bob Iger, during this week’s earnings call, suggests Disney doesn’t expect the toys-to-life market to be around all that much longer.
“We thought we had a really good opportunity to launch our own product in that space, "Iger said. "I realize it was console space, but it was also essentially-- a large component of it was the toys-to-life, they call it toys-to-life business. In fact we did quite well with the first iteration of it, and we did okay with the second iteration. But that business is a changing business and we did not have enough confidence in the business in terms of it being stable enough to stay in it from a self-publishing perspective.”
Fortunately, for anyone waiting on the series’ upcoming Finding Dory playset, it sounds like Disney still plans to release what little content was already scheduled to debut this year. In addition to the aquatic-themed playset, Disney Infinity fans can also look forward to the debut of new content inspired by Alice Through The Looking Glass. Both sets will apparently be released before the end of June; however, there’s currently no word on a release date for either set.
Be sure to check back with iDigitalTimes.com and follow Scott on Twitter for more Disney Infinity coverage throughout 2016 and for however long Disney Interactives supports the now-cancelled Infinity franchise in the coming months.
