Disney to stop publishing video games, discontinues 'Disney Infinity'

Disney Infinity, a highlight in the "toys to life" genre of video games (which uses physical toys in conjunction with video game software) is coming to an end. Disney has announced that they have "made the difficult decision to discontinue production of Disney Infinity," and that the next to retail releases for the series will be the last.

Those releases -- a pack of characters based on Alice Through the Looking Glass and a Play Set based on Finding Dory -- will be released later this month and in June, respectively. They serve as add-ons for Disney Infinity 3.0, which launched with a focus on Star Wars.

According to a quarterly earnings report from Disney, the company is taking a $147 million charge to essentially pull the plug on its game publishing division, though that number is "principally Infinity" and factors in things such as employee severance.

Disney has been slowly backing away from video game publishing for quite some time now, and they've had a number of high profile game cancellations (like the promising Pirates of the Caribbean: Armada of the Damned) over the years. But from the outside looking in, Infinity seemed to be doing well for them. It was Disney's main presence on video game consoles (barring Star Wars: Battlefront from EA), as they've instead chosen to focus on licensing out their properties for a variety of mobile phone games.

Unfortunately, the end of Disney Infinity also means the end of longtime game developer Avalance Software in Utah (not to be confused with Stockholm-based Avalanche Studios), which had been producing games since 1995.

Outside of games, Disney boasted an "unprecedented winning streak at the box office," which Walt Disney Company chairman Robert A. Iger says helped lead to quarterly results that the company is "very pleased with."