Earlier this week, Disney announced that it was pulling the plug on its Infinity series as it was costing the company upwards of $147 million. Additionally, Disney bowed out of the publishing business and shut down Avalanche Software, reportedly resulting in roughly 300 redundancies. But what exactly happened to a series that generated $550 million in revenue within the first ten months? According to sources, it fell victim to miscalculations and mismanagement.
Having spoken to sources close to the company, folks over at Kotaku have published a detailed report on Infinity‘s demise, in which it’s revealed that the company’s sales expectations were far too high despite the toys-to-life series actually doing well. One source speaking on condition of anonymity said:
The biggest issue with [Disney Infinity] 2.0, and probably the reason for the closure of the studio and the end of Infinity was that they made too many toys. Infinity 1.0 had a major shortage of toys. They were almost always off the shelf and manufacturing was behind by months. The expectation was that the brand would grow and they would sell more units and toys. It’s hard to put in perspective how big of a failure this was since all those additional units were added to the books destroyed any chance for 2.0 to be profitable.
Interestingly, this is backed up by Disney’s own financial report from earlier this year, which states:
The decrease from Disney Infinity was due to higher inventory reserves and lower unit sales volume.
Other sources said that it was “weird” for Disney Infinity to be number one in the toys-to-life genre but for its sales to still be considered disappointing. “Disney Infinity was a big seller and earned a lot of revenue for Disney Interactive. I don’t know of another high selling ‘AAA’ game that has been killed like this.”
Had it not been canned, Disney actually had plans for another Infinity game set to be released in 2017. Apparently, it was supposed to come with a story mode featuring characters from Star Wars, Marvel and Disney universes. Not only that, but the company was reportedly also planning to release 12-inch figures for popular characters such as Buzz Lightyear, Elsa, Hulk, Hulkbuster, Jack Skellington, and Darth Vader.
Kotaku has also learned that prior to Infinity‘s cancellation, developer Ninja Theory was working on content based on Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.
You can read the full report by following the source link below.
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[Source: Kotaku]
