That’s why only the biggest companies - Nintendo, Disney, and Activision - are moving into the market so far. The toy-game competition is perhaps one of the biggest wagers any company could make in entertainment. “Each playset has a new world, new characters, and new game play mechanics.” “Infinity is a platform for a lot of different properties,” said Bill Roper, the vice president and general manager of production at Disney Interactive, the game arm of Disney.

Some older franchises may not justify a huge new console game, but they could be the basis for a new playset or a smaller treatment within the Infinity world. John Blackburn, the vice president and general manager of Infinity developer Avalanche Studios, said in an interview with GamesBeat that the platform will help Disney deal with the problem of having a huge number of franchises. The hope is that Infinity will be an enduring platform that the company can build upon over time, adding new games and toys on top of it. Altogether, Disney plans to have five playsets available at the launch of Infinity: The Lone Ranger, Cars 2, Monsters University, The Incredibles, and Pirates of the Caribbean. That Jerry Bruckheimer action flick will create a ton of awareness, and The Lone Ranger playset will ride that slipstream when it debuts with Infinity.

The entertainment giant is launching a remake of The Lone Ranger the film debuts July 3. Where Disney hopes to differentiate itself is by periodically adding new “playsets,” or a new six- to 10-hour game, based on big Disney brands. You put a the game disc in your home console (like an Xbox 360 or a Wii U), but you can modify the character and the environment by putting a different toy on top of a reader platform that plugs into the system. Disney hopes to compete by launching a similar game concept. The Infinity platform combines toys and video games in a single “transmedia” entertainment platform, much like the Skylanders figures that have become a billion-dollar business in the past couple of years.

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