Disney has announced that their toys-to-life range of figures and videogames, Disney Infinity, are to be discontinued and the development team behind the series, Avalanche, is to be closed.

Disney made the announcement yesterday that they plan to discontinue the Disney Infinity range, both the videogames and toys-to-life figures, as well as their plans to close their internal development team behind the series, Avalanche, creating a loss of 300 jobs and charge of $147 million.

Disney Infinity was one of the ‘big three’ toys-to-life franchises, selling alongside Activision’s Skylanders and Nintendo’s own Amiibo. The large shelf space and general sales of the games would indicate that they weren’t particularly struggling at retail but Disney claim the high development costs and lack of growth were the biggest reasons for this discontinuation.

Avalanche, the development team behind it, is to be closed creating a loss of 300 jobs. Disney claim this is a decision they didn’t take lightly, but is something they had to do as they plan to move toward licensing their popular IP to outside developers instead of using their own internal development teams.

"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.”

A charge of $147 million of Disney’s console game business is set to affect the company’s earnings as a direct result of the closure of Avalanche and the discontinuation of the Infinity line. This charge is made up of a multitude of things, such as severance pay for the 300 employee’s and the drop in value of their current stock, as their current toys-to-life and videogame assets in relation to Infinity are predicted to sell at a lower price at retail now that the series is coming to a close.