Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Disney Infinity Live Event reveals Marvel is coming to Disney Infinity 2.0 Fall 2014


Today Disney Infinity hosted a live event on Google+. Plugged as a "join us for a webcast as we unveil the latest chapter of Disney Infinity" the event kicked off at 10am PST and spent the first 20 minutes showing videos of Infinity characters dancing to the game's theme song, while 3000+ people sat and anxiously waited for 10am.


The event started with a montage of Disney creators, animators and writers explaining how Infinity's goal is to have players continue the story of characters we love while being creative in a whole new way.  Suddenly Nick Fury took over the event by webcast! It seems though the  info about Infinity he had was classified so Agent Coulsen (Clark Gregg himself) from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.  was sent to the live event to run the show and introduce "Agent" Jimmy Pitaro the President of Disney Interactive who went over the current results of the game. Pitaro notes that we all know when kids play they create their own worlds controlled by their imaginations, and Infinity aims to emulate that while living up to the great Disney heritage of memory making. Since it's release 3 million starter packs have been sold since launch, and $500 million is estimated global sales in it's first year.  According to the NPD Group in the US Disney has out sold it's competition and continues to grow, and interactive gaming toy sales rose 79% last year. The goal of Infinity though was to great an interactive community, which they do with weekly toy box challenges, where the best submissions are pushed out as free content on a weekly basis. To date 10 million toy boxes have been downloaded. 60% of players time is spend in Toy Box mode.

With the concept that the system would continue to grow, they are now ready to announce Disney Infinity 2.0. With the second version coming in Fall of 2014 they knew they wanted to expand on the Disney universe. The addition of the Marvel character and stories have made the creators rethink game play by creating new experiences that match the characters qualities.
The Avengers, Spiderman and Guardians of the Galaxy will be in this add on.  Marvel, the Marvel Universe and Disney collaborated on this project. One thing separates Marvel characters from other super heroes, they are regular people with real life problems, and their humanity makes them relate-able.  The Infinity add on is another huge leap in the Marvel universe.




Part of the development for Infinity 2.0 is to create a bigger and better game but also listen to the players and their ideas. All of the Infinity 1.0 figures, power discs, toy boxes, and base are compatible with Infinity 2.0. In Fall 2014 the new 2.0 start up kit will come with three figures, but there will also be new toy box games.
Six new game figures were unveiled. From the Avengers there will be Ironman, Hawkeye, Captain America, Black Widow, Thor,  and Hulk and a game piece to open the game levels. There are more than a dozen new Marvel and Disney characters coming to the game.  80 new power discs with new options like team up, costume changes, while the original disc options for new environment disc and new vehicles (including motorcycles) will still exist. The games will be multiplayer. PS2, WiiU, Xbox360, PC, Android, and now PS4 and XBOXONE will be support Infinity 2.0

In 1.0 Metroville was the largest play-set footprint wise. Marvel's city will be four times bigger with Avengers and popular city buildings in the platform.  Special skills and combat, and character locomotion, and attributes and skill tree will be improved in 2.0. There are two modes of locomotion hover and forward flight, with the ability to fight in them, also a super jump feature has been added. Hulk and Spiderman will have the ability to wall crawl. Characters will be able to be upgraded to 20, and you can select the items you want to upgrade through the skill tree.

The newly expanded Toy Box mode has structured play added to it with game box game discs. Usability will be simplified to let players feel like master builders. The brush system allows you to spread out the area you want to create. Builders have been added to move around the toy box area to build for you automatically, and their work can be edited by the player. In 1.0 you couldn't really build inside a structure, but in 2.0 you will be able to add doors and unlock and create rooms to customize. You will even have a "home" that let's you store and display all your customization and trophies. In 1.0 the toy box had no structured play, but in 2.0 there will be toy box games discs in the starter kit for two structured toy box games.  There is now a template option that lets you connect all the logic options that work in the area created and it allows you to create a mini game quickly and easily, all of these will be multiplayer.






Interesting things learned during the event:
It seems the Marvel artists think that Hydra run Dancing with the Stars
The Marvel Universe is coming to Netflix in 2015
More Disney Infinity 2.0 will be unveiled at E3