Surprise: Marvel superheroes (probably) storming Disney Infinity later this year

The Walt Disney Company owns a majority stake in pop culture, so it’s not surprising that it’s bringing more of its properties to its interactive-toy blockbuster Disney Infinity.

Marvel Entertainment, a wholly owned subsidiary of Disney, is teasing that its supermen and superwomen are joining forces with the popular game that has players bringing physical toys into digital worlds. The comic-book company revealed a new video on its site that shows current Disney Infinity characters, like the cast of Pixar’s The Incredibles, wandering around as Captain America’s shield bounces around the environment. This likely means that you can expect the Avengers’ to invade the interactive-toy brand. Bringing in Marvel characters will likely help Disney sell more copies of the game and the toys that go along with it. Disney Infinity was already the 10th best-selling new physical game of 2013, according to industry-intelligence firm The NPD Group.

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Check out the teaser video for yourself, and — as the video suggests — get ready to assemble:

In addition to the introduction of Marvel characters, the video also adds a “2.0 Edition” label to the Disney Infinity title. We’ve reached out to Disney to ask if this represents a full, upcoming sequel or if this is just a software update to the current release. We’ll update this story with any new information.

Disney Infinity is one of the biggest game properties in the world right now. That’s not just due to the success of the software, but it’s also because of its business model. The game is as much about selling physical toys with high profit margins as it is about selling games. Players love it because it enables them to have something physical that they can also play around with in a game whenever they place it on the USB portal.

Publisher Activision introduced the model of combining toys with games when it released Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure in 2011. That game has already made over $2 billion for the company, and a lot of that money comes from the toys. Both Skylanders and Infinity take up a huge amount of display space at physical toy stores around the country (and world), and Skylanders even outsold the perennial giant toy lines from Star Wars and Transformers in 2012.

Disney has already brought in some of its biggest properties to Disney Infinity. Fans can play around in digital playgrounds with Pirates of the Caribbean, Toy Story, and Cars. But it so far hasn’t tapped into characters from the Marvel, Star Wars, or Mickey Mouse universes in any major way. It looks like that won’t last much longer.