Disney Infinity was shut down back in 2016, but it turns out the developers were still working on some interesting things for version 4.0 before the plug was officially pulled. This includes the additions of Yoda from Star Wars and everyone's friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. Check out some game footage in the video below.
The video was shared over on the ResetEra forum, and features some of the crossover content between a variety of exciting Disney brands -- including the princess properties, Star Wars, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe -- which is actually kind of cool. The five-minute video features gameplay from United Front Games' look at the development of Agrabah, as depicted in the popular movie Aladdin and its animated TV show.
As mentioned in the video, the entire game world was not only fully created, but it was also prototyped, tested, and playable from start to finish using the basic gameplay mechanics. How close we all were to having Spidey receiving sage, word-scrambled wisdom.
While the gameplay was already complete at the time of the cancellation, the cinematics and voiceovers were still incomplete. The developers did have placeholders for the voices, but the cinematic sequences were still rough. The game's enemies weren't entirely finished either, so some Star Wars droids from The Clone Wars were featured in their place. However, that actually makes sense, given that the droids from the Separatists begin to attack the palace later in the level.
As a whole, the unreleased level is surprisingly more complete than I thought it would be. It's mentioned that the boss fight still wasn't fully crafted, but it was scheduled to be completed during the next development milestone. After that, it would have just been a matter of polishing up all the loose ends and making sure the new Disney Infinity location gelled with the rest of the previously existing levels.
However, that never happened because Disney pulled the plug on its popular Infinity projects back in 2016. The toys-to-life project was very similar to Activision's widely popular Skylanders series, or the Warner Bros.-backed project _Lego Dimensions. _
Much like the music-rhythm genre, the over-saturation and over-abundance of toys and games within this subgenre coupled with a waning interest and eventually caused casual players to reverse course on their gaming. Disney was one of the first to pull out of the market, later followed by Activision, who put Skylanders on hold following drooping sales.
It wasn't just over-saturation that compelled Disney to give up on Infinity, though. After the company took over LucasFilm and began focusing on producing more Star Wars content, Disney made the odd decision to back out of the video game publishing business altogether by shutting down Disney Interactive, which meant shuttering titles like Disney Infinity.
It seems like with a proper push for quality gameplay experiences and a solid marketing campaign, Disney Infinity could have lived on by introducing more worlds and franchises, all while selling more toys and figurines in the process. Apparently, though, the business division didn't see any long-term profitability from that venture, even with highly popular properties like Wreck-It Ralph and The Incredibles doing strong box office numbers. And that's not to mention mega-popular movies like Avengers.
Nevertheless, we can look back on developer insight videos like the one above to get an idea of what the teams were working on before Disney closed up shop on the gaming ventures. Maybe one day, the game will return to actually live up to its Infinity moniker.
