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Activision “Flattered” by Disney Infinity

By Brian P Rubin | 16 January 2013 | 7 Comments   

skylanders

A post on Polygon today offers up some nice passive-aggressive praise of the recently unveiled Disney Infinity from Activision’s vice president of consumer marketing John Coyne. For those just joining us, Disney Infinity is a sort of cross between Minecraft’s world-building and Activision’s Skylanders’ toy-importing video game mechanic, all with the Disney flavors. It’s impossible not to draw similarities to Skylanders considering Infinity will feature collectible figurines, physical-to-digital bases…the whole thing.

Said Coyne:

“We are thrilled by the incredible success that the Skylanders franchise has had in such a short period of time.

We are also flattered that one of the leading family entertainment companies is joining our toys to life category. We continue to focus on delivering innovative and immersive entertainment experiences to kids around the world and are pouring more creativity into our games. As a result we are well positioned to continue leading the category.”

Nice spin there, Mr. Coyne. Sure, it’s easy to take a look and see this whole thing as following Activision’s lead. Skylanders is a money-printing franchise, capturing kids’ need to collect cool-looking toys and then play the hell out of video games. Combining those ideas into one franchise is genius…but it’s all very similar to the “gotta catch’em all” aspects of Nintendo’s Pokémon franchise. The only real difference is the addition of the toys you have to buy. And as you may have learned from our seven-part history of Nintendo from late last year, Nintendo was inspired in the first place by—who else?—Disney.

It’s all a great circle, you guys. A great circle in which we give other people all our money for adorable, cash-sucking characters.

Via Polygon

7 Comments

  1. Posted by Mugenite on 16 January 13 at 10:13am

    “We are also flattered that one of the leading family entertainment companies is joining our toys to life category.” (Read: FFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-)

  2. Posted by ridicol on 16 January 13 at 12:02pm

    Activision is the worst publisher in the world and they should be filing for bankrupcy not THQ, offering no support for games, and releasing poor quality games should be punishable with years in jail, end of rant, Interesting game but i won’t buy it because of Activision logo

  3. Posted by Ring127 on 16 January 13 at 2:50pm

    ridicol wrote: “EA is the worst publisher in the world and they should be filing for bankrupcy not THQ, offering no support for games, and releasing poor quality games should be punishable with years in jail, end of rant, Interesting game but i won’t buy it because of EA logo”
    Fixed that for you. ;)

  4. Posted by SnipedByAGir1 on 16 January 13 at 3:57pm

    I hope Disney has fun when Activision sues them…

    • Posted by shmoopi on 17 January 13 at 2:22am

      suing them for what ?

      they are just adapting some game mechanics, by your logic sega had all right to sue level-5, which is just preposterous.

    • Posted by Mark on 17 January 13 at 5:44am

      In a sue happy world, they could probably win, but the concept idea it’s not theirs to begin with.

  5. Posted by ridicol on 17 January 13 at 12:55am

    You can also replace Activision with Blizzard

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