To Infinity and Be…

May 10, 2016

Toys-to-life on life support.

BY POLISH TAMALES - Any time when a game studio abruptly closes down and lays off 300+ employees during a lunch break, you always have wonder…

Why?



For some, Disney represents a major titan in the entertainment industry, housing many world wide popular IPs. From their own vault of animated characters and films, to Marvel comics, and their most recent purchase, Star Wars. If there’s any company in the world that could afford to take a few bumps, it would be Disney.

So how could they say they were behind Disney Interactive and the Disney Infinity brand a year ago and simply just close down its gaming division and Avalanche studios abruptly with a new line of figures in just a few weeks?





ANOTHER GUITAR HERO?



Unfortunately, the realities of running any corporation follows one rule:

Making money.

That’s not to say Disney Interactive didn’t have a runaway success with Disney Infinity. Announced in January 15, 2013, Disney invested approximately over $100 million dollars developing its new evolving platform in the Toys-to-life genre. The benefits of creating an expandable DLC-driven platform to promote upcoming films greatly out weighed the lukewarm reception of Disney interactive’s movie tie-in games. Utilizing primarily Pixar’s roster of characters, Disney Infinity 1.0 was released in the summer of 2013 and was met with mostly positive reviews. While still considered second in terms of sales compared to Activision’s Skylanders, it was considered a success.

As the deal with Lucas was signed, fans heavily speculated on the eventual inclusion of the Star Wars brand in Infinity and was finally teased with an in-game lightsaber once a player has collected all the figures in 1.0.

While the toys-to-life genre was relatively new, many journalists considered it as another Guitar Hero phase in the gaming industry. If it wasn’t the cost of entry for casual gamers, it was the new concept of locking out playable characters behind a paywall. When comparing it an average Lego title with dozens of playable characters at the time, many frugal parents shied away from the title. This of course didn’t phase your hardcore Disney collector at all and with the impending announcement of 2.0 and the inclusion of Marvel characters, things looked great for Disney Interactive and the growing Disney Infinity community.

Except for some oversight.





MISTAKES WERE MADE



Disney Infinity 2.0 has to be one of the biggest launches for Disney Interactive. They went all out renting out large retail shelf spaces at Toys R Us and expanding additional shelves at Best Buy, Wal-mart and Gamestop. With many stores making more room for 2.0 figures, 1.0 merchandise was slowly being phased out and set at clearance. Riding out the success of Marvel’s Avengers movies, 2.0 was poised to take over 2014 Holiday season. Not without it’s hiccups and critics mind you.



For myself, Disney Infinity was a strange bridge between myself and connecting with my girl friend’s daughter at the time. If it wasn’t for Frozen’s insidious popularity, it would’ve been different, but it allowed me to spend more time connecting with a child since grade school. Disney Infinity was an excellent way to spend time with kids and provided many unspoken nights of singing “let it go!” in toy box mode. She had a great affinity for female characters, especially Black Widow from the Avengers.

So while walking down an aisle in Target for her birthday, I noticed a Toy Story playset with Jesse. I knew that she didn’t have 1.0, but the 2.0 version of Disney Infinity. Playing it safe, I did a google search on the backwards compatibility on the figures and it was somewhat confusing at first. You could use the figures in 2.0, but the campaign piece that it came with was not compatible with 2.0. A similar issue occurred with 1.0 software, by not having it compatible with newer figures. So the concept of a sequential piece of updated software didn’t apply to Disney Infinity.

An example would be retrieving a file created by Photoshop 7 and opening it in Photoshop CS6. You could open it, modify it and resave it. However, if you took a file from CS6 and reopened it in Photoshop 7, it wouldn’t be able to do it (unless using some very specific save features). This all makes sense at a software point of view. Disney Infinity, however, completely chose to ignore full backwards compatibility with their older software. By excluding 1.0’s campaign modes bundled with 1.0 play sets, it confused a lot of casual gamers and parents alike using the new 2.0 starter sets.

Compatibility wasn’t just one issue. Reviewers, such as Daniel Krupa of IGN, pointed out the lack of polish and content presented in 2.0. Many of the play sets felt rushed and 2 of the 3 play sets recycled nearly the same assets, minus a snow filter. The lack of variety combined with the number of play sets from the starter pack was reduced from 3 to 1. Even with new implemented features such as skill trees for each character, many 1.0 figures felt horribly unbalanced and unfinished by comparison.

While 2.0 did well on the market, there was an over abundance of product. Unlike Nintendo’s Amiibos, Infinity figures were everywhere. Being priced at the higher end of the spectrum for toys-to-life at the time, meant that casual players often had to wait for sales. Unlike the scarcity that drove Amiibo sales, Disney always kept all figures in print year round. Toys R Us stores would often have cases of unsold 2.0 starter packs (1.0 starters included) in their over stock as they were still being sold for their MSRP into the beginning of 2016. The overproduction of 2.0 would heavily hurt the brand’s bottom line, as many retail stores struggled to sell remaining 2.0 starters and figures as the new Star Wars 3.0 was released in 2015.





YOU WERE THE CHOSEN ONE



Star Wars Disney Infinity 3.0 did almost everything right. The in-game engine was more stable, some 2.0 character skill trees were balanced, racing in toy boxes felt like actual race cars instead of slot cars, and everything just felt better than the rushed Marvel 2.0. Having more studios outsourced with specific game mechanic tasks meant most of the game felt entirely polished compared to all the previous versions. Sans the same compatibility issues that plagued and confused consumers before, it looked great on paper.



With the Force Awakens being released just a few months away, the Star Wars IP was the golden goose for Disney Interactive.

Released late Summer of 2015, Star Wars 3.0 received mostly positive reviews. Most critics compared it more favorably than it’s last version. It even won a few awards, including NYC’s International Toy Fair for 2016. Unfortunately, it could’ve been one of the reasons why Disney Infinity is gone.

Going back to corporate culture, success isn’t measured by a cancer patient’s happiness or making fan bases happy. It’s measured by the amount of money they make in a quarter compared to last. That’s the cold reality and when your product starts operating on a loss and someone in charge makes over projected sales based on the Star Wars brand, it gets really cold.

It’s not too uncommon for gaming companies to over project sales for a game. Square-Enix made that mistake with the Tomb Raider reboot in 2013. Most recently, their over projection for the long awaited, Final Fantasy 15. For Disney Interactive, it’s not too hard to imagine someone pitching an unreal number to investors, given Star War’s popularity.

While we’ll never publically get straight answers and numbers on the operating losses directly from Disney Infinity, we can tell that all the recent clearance sales at Best Buy and major retail stores that there was something going on. Even before today’s announcement, there was some absurd sales that didn’t happen in the previous lifecycle. It was a few weeks ago that we had $5 Hulkbusters and Ultrons, including $2 power disc packs. Yet at the same time, there’s still tons of 2.0 starters and collector edition sets still taking up shelf space.

It does present the question. Did toys-to-life outgrow its audience or did it’s audience outgrow toys-to-life?

It does have the Guitar Hero deja vu vibe.





END OF LINE

Learning about today’s announcement was definitely hard on Disney fans and especially those that got laid off at Avalanche studios and families affected by it.

With only two more IPs to promote Disney/Pixar’s films (Alice Through the Looking Glass and Finding Dory), you have to imagine how scarce the release for these figures will be. Considering how long Disney Interactive rented out shelf space from retail stores to prominently display their products, will these final waves of figures still get the same shelf space or will they be set aside on a random end cap?

Whether it’s over production of 2.0 figures or over projected sales, Disney Infinity was the swan song for Disney Interactive.

What a great song it was.