Like many fans here, I've invested a considerable amount of money into Infinity - several thousand by now with the multiple consoles
![Wink ;)](./images/smilies/icon_e_wink.gif)
![Wink ;)](./images/smilies/icon_e_wink.gif)
There are undoubtedly all sorts of internal details concerning Infinity's cancellation that none of us on these forums will ever know. But I believe one of the factors was that Infinity's toughest competitor was itself. With the Play Sets & the Expansion Games it was competing in the toys-to-life market in a traditional sense. The partners, especially in 3.0, tightened the combat mechanics, the driving gameplay, etc. such that Infinity earned that #1 spot from that alone. With the Toy Box, Infinity was competing as a community-supported sandbox environment, against the likes of Minecraft, Spark, LittleBigPlanet, & even Mario Maker (but you never heard about that). When you consider the scale of the Infinity's investment, from animation, to coding, & even to marketing, Infinity was at odds with itself. It absolutely needed to market the Play Sets as these stand-alone games, fed from toys-to-life figures, to compete in the traditional gaming sense. They were compelled to overshadow Toy Box creations, which were provided at no cost from the community. Implementing Toy Box interfaces were likely to be much more complex for the Infinity Team, for they needed to a handle all sorts of unforeseen combinations from players. The Play Sets had a greater requirement to be tight. These little gaps in the Toy Box function, certain quirks in the existing toys, I think, was the result of this split. The website did not directly publish official Toy Box interfaces; documentation & video tutorials grew organically from the fan base. So was it a franchise of stand-alone video game experiences, or was it a community-based sandbox to create & share your own Disney toy stories? It attempted to be both. In every single instance where I spoke to people outside this forum about Infinity since its first launch (many of whom already owned the game), none of them understood what the Toy Box can do. None of them.
This is why I think that the best chance for the reboot is for the new licenser to choose one of the two markets. They can succeed in either one, but it's to their disadvantage to try both. I am admittedly biased; I want the Toy Box to win so that I can continue expanding the corporate citizenship efforts. I see the Toy Box as middleware where the community-provided creations are the Disney Infinity Application layer that can be played cross-platform around the world. I see the Toy Box as a way to reach an enormous demographic at a time where there is increased focus on early computer science education. The resulting games & stories are so fun that most don't necessarily know the value in that. It's just so much fun. And I think the Disney Infinity Community would help provide so much additional content for free, there's much less animation, development, & marketing investment required for the Toy Box reboot - making it coincidentally the better business case, too. The entire Disney Infinity Team was needed to make the reboot possible, even if just a fraction get rehired to continue it. That's important to remember, when you get a second chance to serve & entertain millions of families around the world.
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