Disney Infinity

» see disneyinfinity.com as it lived, on the wayback machine

~ the obituary ~

disney infinity launched on august 18 2013, two years after skylanders pioneered the toys-to-life format. the pitch was straightforward: disney owned more recognizable characters than any other entertainment company on earth, so a disney figurine line should beat skylanders in raw brand pull. avalanche software in salt lake city built the engine. the starter pack came with a usb-connected infinity base, two figurines, a sulley playset disc, and a sandbox-creation mode called the toy box.

the first game sold 294,000 copies in its first two us weeks and crossed one million worldwide by october 2013. disney infinity 2.0 added the marvel characters in september 2014. infinity 3.0 added star wars in august 2015, two months before the force awakens hit theaters, which was the kind of cross-property synergy only disney could pull off.

then the toys-to-life market cratered. skylanders sales were sliding. lego dimensions launched into the same shrinking pie. parents discovered that the figurines were starting to feel like the kind of recurring purchase you regret on the third or fourth one. on may 10 2016 disney announced infinity was cancelled, avalanche software was closing, and between 250 and 300 people were losing their jobs. the official statement said disney was exiting self-published console games to focus on licensing its ip to outside studios.

i did not own a console with toys-to-life pegs in this period. i was on the pc side. infinity was for households with kids and a wii u or xbox 360 in the living room, and a disposable budget for ten-dollar figurines. it sat in the part of internet history i can read about but not personally remember.

~ the case file ~

~ what really happened ~

the immediate cause was a single quarter. disney's q1 2016 earnings call called out infinity for missing sales targets, and four months later the franchise was gone. avalanche software's office in salt lake city sat empty until warner bros bought the studio in january 2017 and reactivated it for the hogwarts legacy project, which is its own redemption arc but not a disney one.

~ what got buried with it ~

the infinity base usb dongle is a brick now. the figurines still scan if you boot the game and have an old save, but the toy-box online features were shut off in march 2017 and the marketplace where users shared custom levels is gone. the playset discs are interactive paperweights without the disc-reader peripheral.

disney's exit from self-published console games turned out to be permanent. since 2016 the disney ip vault has been licensed out to ubisoft for star wars, ea for star wars, square enix for kingdom hearts, insomniac for spider-man, and so on. disney does not make games anymore. infinity was its last sustained attempt.

~ the long tail ~

infinity figurines are interesting objects now. they were sold as collectibles but produced in mass numbers, so they have no real secondary-market value except for the rare last-wave star wars releases which never shipped. the unreleased figurines from infinity 3.5 (announced before cancellation) are the only ones that fetch any money on ebay. everything else sits in plastic bins at goodwill, sorted next to skylanders.

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