Disney's video game biz sees continued success, thanks to Infinity

Today, The Walt Disney company announced its financials -- good overall, with revenue up 10 percent year on year for the quarter, to $11.6 billion. Some part of that is attributable to its games business, which has gone through a rough transition but seems to have made it to the other side successfully. Disney Infinity helped drive revenues for its games business up 38 percent year over year, to $268 million. That took it from a loss of $54 million for the quarter a year ago to $14 million in income this year. Growth in the company's mobile business in Japan also contributed to the boost. Infinity is what helped the company's games business swing toward profit at the end of last year, though it did end the year with a loss. As far as 2014 goes, this is the second consecutive quarter the games biz has spent in the black. The company recently announced the "2.0" version of Infinity, which will draw in characters from its subsidiary, Marvel Comics. Disney's game biz saw big layoffs during the quarter, and it even offloaded some of its older social games onto publisher RockYou, which took on some of its dev staff, too. Toys are officially big business in the game space: Activision today sang the praises of its toy-based Skylanders franchise, which generated more revenue for the company in the first quarter of 2014 than Call of Duty: Ghosts did in the same period.