Skylanders vs Disney Infinity: Infinity Exec Producer Discusses Differences Between Games, Open World Gameplay Ahead of August Release Date

Disney Infinity promises gamers a unique chance to interact with countless Disney icons, through both the digital game space and with real-world toys that players must buy to unlock new characters. 

John Vignocchi, executive producer for the game, explains to Polygon that Disney has spent a long while looking into their massive library to see which movies and characters make sense for a "playset" for the game. Playsets are what players will actually use in the video game, and each one will bring a unique campaign. For example, The Incredibles will have a campaign centered around melee combat, while Pirates of the Caribbean would instead have ship combat and swordplay.

These playsets would also add new tools for the user created Toy Box world of the game. Toy Box mode is an open world sandbox-style area of the game where players can interact with the characters in the game. Vignocchi explains that for the game, players are playing with a toy version of the character, and not the actual character.

"The conceit for Infinity is that these aren't the characters themselves, rather toy versions of the characters...That was the thing we would come back and say. 'After all, at the end of the day, these are the toy versions of the characters and who are we to tell kids that's the wrong way to play with their toys.'"

Though many have pointed out that Disney Infinity is similar to Skylanders, the addition of the open-world Toy Box mode and the general openness of the game sets it apart from the Activision-owned Skylanders. In addition, while Skylanders is mostly original creations, Disney Infinity lets players mix up popular Disney characters together in an open-world setting to do with as they wish. Disney Infinity is out August for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii, Wii U, PC, and 3DS.