Today we have some sad news on the gaming front. It has been announced that production on Disney's action-adventure sandbox game Disney Infinity has ceased and the game franchise has been discontinued. Disney Infinity has been well know and beloved by Disney fans of all ages for bringing together a host of different characters from many Disney properties including Pixar and Marvel. The newest iteration of the game, Disney Infinity 3.0, was released last year and introduced a plethora of Star Wars characters and maps to the franchise. According to reports, the developers had even more playsets planned, including some Star Wars ones, most of which sadly will not make it into production. Senior VP and GM John Blackburn released a statement earlier today and had this to say regarding this surprising turn of events:
"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."
He goes on to reveal that three new characters from Alice Through The Looking Glass are due for release later this month, along with a Finding Dory playset coming in July. These will be the final retail releases for Disney Infinity, sadly.
Reasons for the cancellation seem to come from a downturn in sales. Kotaku reports that Disney CEO Bob Iger said that while the first Disney Infinity game was successful, sales subsequently went "downhill". It also appears that the developer behind the game, Avalanche Software, is also being shut down.
Source: Disney Interactive
Follow The Star Wars Underworld on Twitter @TheSWU for more updates about this story and other breaking Star Wars news.
6 comments:
To hand it to Avalanche & Disney, the trap wasn't just a money trap for us, it was an IP promise trap for them - in a 3 year span, how could anyone possibly be able to ensure backwards compatibility between toys released from different years? If there were any tech advances within that time that could potentially make the game run better, the teams had to make the decision early on whether to ignore them & keep it at 1.0 so that any and all toys could interact, or release upgrades that made the game run better, explore more incredible ideas & offer the player more freedom. They chose the latter.
They did considerably well, all things considered. Start buying the toys then (those last figures especially): a closing cycle is a recipe for rarity in collector circles.
Post a Comment