Disney’s Infinity is good to go; but Disney’d rather catch the holiday surge.
Disney’s Infinity MMO, set to release in June, has been pushed back to an August release date in a move that, Disney executives insist, isn’t tied to any development problems. In fact, the game’s pretty much good to go on schedule, but Disney has its eye on the main chance, and it thinks that August is a more useful release date – from a sales point of view – than June.
Partly it’s a push from retailers driving the switch. The brick-and-mortar crowd senses profit, but would rather Infinity hit closer to the holiday spending surge, which begins in October. Disney also has its eye on Skylanders – its competition – the next set being scheduled to arrive this fall. If Disney brings its goods to market just before Activision Blizzard does, it can dominate shelves.
Or, as Disney executive John Pleasants puts it, “we think it’s good to be first and really lean into the most important selling season of the year.” This does mean that Infinity will miss the Monsters University movie release date, but that can’t be helped. Higher sales and retail domination trump movie releases every time, in Disney’s estimation.
Come the fall, it expects to reap the reward from its timing decision, and in the meantime it has a couple extra months to polish its product. We’ll soon know if its release date decision paid off. Infinity will be coming to Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, Wii U, and PC in August.
Source: New York Times
