Disney Infinity announced

Disney has announced Disney Infinity, a new game platform for all major formats, that'll allow players to use collectable toys to play in some of the company's biggest properties.

Developed by Cars 2 ands Toy Story 3 game tie-in developer Avalanche, Infinity operates as a platform model similar to Activision's Skylanders, combining interactive adventures of Disney's movie properties with collectable toys that can be used to drop characters, props or locations into the game world via an electronic board peripheral, entitled the Disney Infinity Base.

All toys will carry the same uniform design, and character casts will have worlds tailored to their particular play type - the Incredibles, for instance, will have a city to run about and combat bad guys. The three-character starter pack will include faces from Monsters, Incredibles and Pirates of the Caribbean, but other familiar Disney names will also be appearing in separate pack releases - thirty characters in all will be available at launch.

The game will also contain a Toy Box mode, similar to Toy Story 3's, that'll allow all characters, items, vehicles to play together and contains an extensive world editor mode. The title will include two-player local and four player online.

Disney Infinity will operate as the base platform for all future Disney movies from the developer, letting Avalanche create toys and new worlds built as part Infinity, and therefore avoiding the problematic - and short - development time frame that usually comes from movie tie-ins. Avalanche has said this is "at least a five year plan" for them.

The game, releasing for all major platforms this summer to coincide with the release of the latest Pixar Monsters University film, (3DS and iOS versions are also planned) will come with a starter pack including board, three characters and a cube that'll allow access to each representative's world.

We were invited to an exclusive viewing of Infinity at Disney's offices last week for a closer look at the project. You can find that in-depth feature, plus interview with Avalanche, here.