All Articles: Disney Infinity

Disney Infinity, Disney Interactive’s attempt to clone the success of Skylanders, is now available in stores. But you’ll never believe how much it cost to produce and just what effect is has had on Disney’s video game division.

The wall Street Journal recently published a behind-the-scenes look at Disney Infinity and, according to their sources, the game (and its associated toy line) cost more than $100 million to produce. Only Star Wars: The Old Republic can boast a higher production budget.

But this gargantuan project comes at a cost for Disney Interactive. Internal development within the company has ceased and all of their future projects (Fantasia: Music Evolved, Star Wars: Battlefront, the Visceral Studios Star Wars game, and Kingdom Hearts III) are co-productions with other publishers. According to The Wall Street Journal’s report, devotion to Disney Infinity also caused the axe to fall on several other titles including a tie-in game based on this Summer’s Iron Man 3 and an interanlly-developed Star Wars game.

But I think Robert Iger, Disney’s CEO, best summed up the importance of Disney Infinity’s launch: “If Infinity does well, it bodes very well for the bottom line of this unit. If it doesn’t do well, the opposite will be the case.”

Well said, Bob.

“Series 1” of Disney Infinity is very focused focus on the studio’s animated efforts. Most of the figures announced so far have been pulled from the worlds of Toy Story, Monsters Inc., The Incredibles, and Cars. But the Skylanders-like game also has a “real world” side represented by characters from Pirates of the Caribbean. And much like Jack Sparrow’s search for rum, many Disney fans have asked of Infinity… “Where’s Marvel and Star Wars?”

According a GamesIndustry International interview with Bill Roper, General Manager at Disney Interactive, there’s a chance that the Marvel universe and a galaxy far, far away could find their way into Infinity:

“”I think the beauty of something like Infinity is that it’s a platform that we’re building. So we don’t try to be coy about it – we’ve done a lot of work about identifying the properties that we felt would really make the platform sing at launch, but I never discount any possibilities with the vast array of characters and worlds that we can tap into across the company,” Roper said. He later singled out Star Wars as a possibility: “[The Star Wars acquisition] was definitely exciting when that [news] came down from within the company. We love the potential for Infinity – we always joke, well, ‘the possibilities are infinite’.”

While that’s far from confirmation, the Disney brass are clearly thinking about it. And with the extensive film schedule the company has planned for the Star Wars saga and the Avengers: Phase Two initiative, I think it makes perfect business sense to add characters from Marvel and Star Wars to Infinity sometime down the road (perhaps Summer 2015… when both The Avengers 2 and Star Wars: Episode VII hit theaters).

The Disney Infinity “Starter Pack” will be available for the 3DS, PS3, Wii, Wii U, and Xbox 360 on August 18.

Disney Infinity, the media company’s take on the lucrative toy/game combo first made famous by Skylanders, will miss it’s planned June release date. Instead, the game will be released for the 3DS, PS3, Wii, Wii U, and Xbox 360 on August 18. According to John Pleasants, Co-President of Disney Interactive, the delay was actually made at the request of retailers who hoped to see Disney Infinity in stores closer to the holiday shopping season.

Pleasants also said, “We could deliver in June if we wanted to. Will a two-month timing change help us? Sure, of course. It gives us a little more time to add bells and whistles and make sure it really sings and pops.”

Disney Interactive is a big company and they can do what they want, but this has to be the worst reason for a game delay ever. And they announced it publicly! I just can’t believe it.

[Source: The New York Times]