Disney Interactive is exiting the video game business for what feels like the umpteenth time. The publisher has announced today that it will no longer self-publish console titles, meaning that it's shuttering Avalanche Software and ditching toys-to-life release Disney Infinity. The latter will result in around 300 job losses.
So, what's the reason behind the decision? Well, money as always. The company claims that Disney Infinity – the most recent entry of which leaned heavily on Star Wars – had "lower results" than expected. There'll be two more toy sets before the entire project is jettisoned: one character pack based upon Alice through the Looking Glass this month, followed by a Finding Dory playset in June.
There will, of course, continue to be games based upon Disney properties, but they'll be licensed out similarly to the way that EA has exclusive rights to Star Wars. We wouldn't be surprised if most of its efforts when into mobile moving forwards. Nevertheless, this isn't the first time that the Mickey Mouse maker has downsized its gaming operations – the closure of Split/Second dev Black Rock being one instance.
Our thoughts, as always, go out to all of those impacted by this announcement.
[source disneyinteractive.com, via ditm-twdc-us.storage.googleapis.com, eurogamer.net]
Comments 12
what a letdown
Thanks, ESPN... Disney had to cut costs somewhere and suits don't care about anything less than XX million.
as long as they maintain their partnership with Square-Enix for Kingdom Hearts I don't care what else they do
I loved Split/Second, that's the only game I ever played from them.
Hard luck. For me the whole concept is a bit crap. I don't really care how popular it may or may not be, I think video games and action figures should just stay separate. I think when kids get a hold of VR this whole genre might creak.
I'll still never forgive Disney for pulling the plug on Propaganda Games while they were working on a follow-up to Turok (2008).
Well when you have the open goal that is Star Wars but then have the base game set around the awful prequels then you're on dodgy ground. This and other strange choices such as not letting the characters mix with each others games, I would have thought this was the whole point and is one thing which lego dimensions at least got right. While I'm at it why were all the character models based off the clone wars cartoon making them quite ugly? This was a market that was only ever going to dissappear, there are only so many characters people are going to buy before they realise that they simply aren't worth the huge outlay or they run out of places to put them
I'll miss the figures, the games not so much, and I feel my kids will agree. I know I sound like a total a-hole now, since 300 people lost their jobs, but we are a bit closer to Marvel vs Capcom now! Yep, we are! We are, right?
3.0 was a brilliant game, shame they've ditched the series.
@carlos82 They also have base games for the original trilogy and episode VII, though.
Pretty predictable to be honest, Activision flooded the market with one genre and I doubt that's ever worked in the long run
@Matroska I meant it's starter pack and it just seemed an odd decision, that and not mixing the characters up and letting us use characters in different level packs.
I hate Disney, they did this for Marvel, and now Star Wars.
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