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TO INFINITY... AND CASH CONVERTERS - BY DARREN LOCK

16/5/2016

7 Comments

 
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BY DARREN LOCK
Like the shooting of JFK or when Elvis ate his last fried banana and peanut butter sandwich, we all remember where we were when our favourite software franchise gets shutdown.

Not that long ago it was the end of Lionhead and the Fable franchise that reminded us of our own impending mortality.
 
Last week, parents around the globe were consoling their children in a tear and snot-stained hurricane caused by the news that Disney Infinity was to end, and the developer Avalanche Software was expected to close as a result of this.

​Or perhaps they weren’t because their kids were off busy playing Minecraft.
RIPPLES
​The ripples caused by the culling of Infinity is sure to play out and it gives interesting food-for-thought.

The toys-to-life side of the gaming industry is relatively young and began with the Skylanders franchise back in 2011. Now the question needs to be asked: if Disney cannot sustain a franchise like this with its gargantuan back catalogue of intellectual property spanning Marvel, Star Wars, Disney and beyond, what future is there for other players in that game?
 
The toys themselves are appealing but they aren’t really toys, are they? They are figurines. Little plastic, crap statuettes that inspire nothing from a child’s imagination.

We had the Disney Infinity 2.0 set in the house and while the kids were initially interested in the game, the single player levels were simplistic and dull and the sandbox area, which should have been the major selling point, did nothing to inspire my kids to play. It seemed to lack the immediacy of Minecraft and the immersiveness that franchise inspires.

​So on a software level, the game felt a little undercooked and half-finished. Not good for a triple-A franchise.
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​I KNOW WHAT I LIKE
Then there’s the toys themselves. Simply put: they are not toys. They lack articulation or any aspect of playability compared to my childrens other “figurines” of choice.

​They are too well made, too well painted, almost trophy like in their aspect, making them a little too nice to be played with, if you get my drift.
 
This criticism can also be levelled at other competitors, especially the Amibo range put out by Nintendo.

​Never has so much plastic crap been sold so for so much to so many in such a short time. Some might say that Nintendo has cynically massaged the market to make certain figures in the Amibo range “rare” and therefore more “expensive” and “collectable”.

AFTERGLOW
​But those of you who are into collecting this kind of stuff - take a note of what has happened with Disney Infinity, a property that should have been successful.

I mean Star Wars, Marvel…Mickey Bleeding Mouse!!! I would advise you to offload those Amibos while you still can because the toys-to-life market has just seen the bubble burst.
 
And in enough time we’ll see a flood of plastic figurines finding there way onto eBay, into the game stores and Cash Convertors and none of them being worth the plastic they are made of (unless you keep them mint in their box and place them back in the attic for twenty years, defeating their primary purpose).

DARREN LOCK'S YOUTUBE CHANNEL
FROM THE ARCHIVE:
  • 15 FORBIDDING PICTURES OF VINTAGE DISNEY CHARACTERS, WHICH FOR SOME REASON WE'VE CAPTIONED "I COULD DRINK YOU UNDER THE TABLE!"
  • LET'S ALL GO AND LIVE IN DISNEYLAND: THE OPTIMISM OF VIDEO GAMES - BY MR BIFFO
  • 10 KIDS HAVING THE TIME OF THEIR LIVES AT DISNEYLAND​
7 Comments
Old Red
16/5/2016 12:11:53 pm

I, for one, am glad this silly toy-gamey-tappy-thingy is starting to wind its neck it. The last few months I have noticed that amiibos are starting to find their way into cash converters for a few quid and for that price I'm game for the DLC gubbins. I managed to pick up the Fox amiibo for fiver a few weeks back. If I had bought it for the retail price, I would have felt well done, but for a few quid it's a nice little extra for a game I like.

The only amiibo I gave two figs about was the Toad one cause I was looking for any excuse to go back to Treasure Tracker. All the others seemed like such a waste of time and money. Seeing how the Fox amiibo is used in Super Smash Bros. Wii U only reinforced my doubts.

Reply
Spiney O'Sullivan
16/5/2016 12:13:01 pm

I love the visual style of the figures, but have no interest in the game. My shelves are looking forward to a sudden influx of these things if they're going to be hitting the bargain bin.

Unless the sudden scarcity of them actually drives prices up...

Reply
Ham
16/5/2016 12:31:44 pm

I could never see the sense in people paying silly money for 'rare' amiibos, let alone trying to catch em all. There must be getting on for a hundred now, even at £10 a go that's a thousand pound on plastic statues with little in game functionality (probably my biggest gripe with them). More production means hardly any are hard to get anymore, but even as a massive Nintendo fan I don't think I'll buy more than the singular one I own. Just bought city skylines for a tenner and ploughed 8 hours in over two days, much better value!

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Kelvin Green link
16/5/2016 12:32:42 pm

I'm with Spiney; I have no interest in any of the games, but I like the design of the figures -- the Marvel ones in particular -- so I'm hoping that this means they'll drop in price and I can pick up a few.

Reply
Professional Stock Broker
16/5/2016 06:07:26 pm

Time to invest on Amiibos.

Reply
Damon link
17/5/2016 03:45:29 am

I have a handful of the animal crossing amiibo. I bought them because they are tiny plastic animals and so long as they remain that way I've gotten my $13 worth.

But I also bought some $115 artisan adult collectible dolls so I went into amiibo thinking of them as collectible figurines that happened to do more, not as part of a game that also happened to be a figurine.

I don't plan to shill them for value later, I plan for them to chill on my bookshelf with a green stuffed penguin I bought to support a free zoo and my Benjamin Franklin action figure I got as a valentine's day gift from an Ex I'm still friends with.

Plus it's unlikely that a $13 mass-produced figurine will appreciate faster than the rate of inflation. Even insanely expensive N64 games for the most part just matched their original value. Even SNES games that go for hundreds of dollars cost more dollars but the purchasing power of those dollars has gone down so much buying it is the same economic burden when compared to the purchasing power of those dollars.

Reply
Lindsay
17/5/2016 01:16:38 pm

People were resentful enough of DLC already before the price got tripled and attached to a statuette. But there's a fourth player in this that hasn't been mentioned: Lego Dimensions.

Hefty startup fee and dinosaur wired interface (you'd think it'd have native support for the Wii U's built-in NFC) aside, the cost of the playsets - that you can actually play with - is pretty much what you'd pay anyway for a small Lego set.

Disney's statement isn't that they've had it with toys-to-life. It's that they're pulling out of direct involvement. Are they looking at Lego Batman and wanting Spidey and Chewie and Mickey to march under his banner?

As for Amiibo… hey, bring on the crash. If I can get my Splatoon DLC for a fair price, fine by me. If each Amiibo behaved more like a master key that unlocked stuff in loads of games, that'd be one thing. There's nothing to give me faith in the thing at the moment. I suppose it'll burn out and the board will blame iPhones again.

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