Disney Cancels Disney Infinity, Shuts Down Avalanche Software

By Garrett Martin | May 10, 2016 | 4:54pm

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UPDATE: Disney Interactive has confirmed via email that the Peter Pan figure announced at D23 2015 has been cancelled. The final retail releases for Disney Infinity are the Alice Through the Looking Glass figures and Finding Dory playset mentioned in John Blackburn’s statement.

The Wall Street Journal’s Ben Fritz first broke the news on Twitter: Disney was cancelling Disney Infinity and getting out of the videogame publishing business. The Disney Infinity part was later confirmed by John Blackburn, the Senior Vice President and General Manager of Disney Infinity, on the official Infinity site. Launched in 2003, the toys-to-life game has released three games and dozens of figures based on Disney, Pixar, Marvel and Star Wars characters, and in the process lost Disney $147 million dollars, according to Fritz. Fritz also announced that Disney would be closing Avalanche Software, the studio that developed Disney Infinity, with a loss of “close to 300 jobs.”

According to Polygon, Jimmy Pitaro, the head of consumer products and interactive media at Disney, Disney will be moving “exclusively to a licensing model.” So instead of releasing their own games, they’ll be working with other publishers and designers to produce videogames based on Disney’s various IPs.

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Disney Infinity fans will have two final releases to look forward to: three figures from the Alice Through the Looking Glass movie, and a final play set based on Pixar’s Finding Dory. Those will be out in May and June.

When reached for comment, Disney Interactive provided us with this statement from Pitaro:

“After a thorough evaluation, we have modified our approach to console gaming and will transition exclusively to a licensing model. This shift in strategy means we will cease production of Disney Infinity, where the lack of growth in the toys-to-life market, coupled with high development costs, has created a challenging business model. This means that we will be shutting down Avalanche, our internal studio that developed the game. This was a difficult decision that we did not take lightly given the quality of Disney Infinity and its many passionate fans.”