In what was a rather unexpected move, Disney announced it was ending the Disney Infinity game series!
http://www.disneyinteractive.com/blog/update-disney-infinity/
White note officially saying why they made this decision, a major part could be due to the massive decline in toy-to-life video game sales over the past year.
You see, the thing about these games is that you don’t just buy the game itself. You have to buy special figures to go along with it! Now, that seems cool, until you look at the prices. The game itself, which contains the software, a few starter figures, and the character reading “portal” device, usually costs around $70 USD. Okay, a little pricey but not too bad. The figures though, individually, are on average $14 USD each. This means that to collect a full set you can easily spend hundreds, only for a new game to be released the next year.
Infinity 3.0, the last major release in the series.
Let’s not forget too that Disney Infinity wasn’t the only title available: there is also the original toy-to-life title, Skylanders, and the new Lego Dimensions game, the latter costing even more for the starter set and figures than Infinity!
Now, I have never played Infinity. I have played Skylanders, and I do think the idea, at it’s core, is cute, and I know as a child I would have enjoyed getting new figures. However, the costs simply make it too expensive to keep up with for anyone but the most dedicated adult collectors with disposable income. Parents, as always, grow tired of purchasing such things for their kids, especially at those prices, and once the child grows out of the game, what then? They are stuck with dozens of figures with relatively minimal resell value.
Heck, the value most parents place in the games can be summed up in the fact that more than half the time I hear someone ask about Disney Infinity, they will call it “Disney Xfinity”, Xfinity being the brand name Comcast uses for it’s internet and telecommunications services.
So, then, much like Guitar Hero and other “need to buy accessories to keep up” style games, Infinity fades into the sunset. It had a good run, to be sure, but time has shown once again that gaming is best kept simple. You buy a system, you buy a game, you play the game, and enjoy the game. That simple.