A news report yesterday revealed a stunning piece of information regarding Nintendo and a possible partnership with Activision that would have made the popular Skylanders series a Nintendo exclusive, however Nintendo turned down the offer. This report comes from Polygon which exlpains in detail the origins of Skylanders and how they’ve exploded onto the gaming scene and have become a franchise now worth over $2 billion.
This news comes at an interesting time where it’s a well known fact that Nintendo is losing profit on a major scale, while the Skylanders franchise has done nothing but grow in popularity. Polygon reports that Activision was originally seeking out a partner for the original Skylander title from 2011 Spyro’s Adventure, and Activision thought of making Nintendo that very partner. Toys for Bob, the developer of Skylanders took an early demo to Nintendo of America. Paul Riche, co-founder of Toys for Bob said “They took a long time looking at it, and eventually made the comment ‘we have never seen anything like this before’. I’ve always wondered what they meant by that.”
While Nintendo rejected the idea of using toys within video games originally, that doesn’t mean that they have abandoned the concept completely. In fact, Nintendo released a game last year, Pokemon Rumble U, for the Wii U, which uses the same concept. Players can go out and buy real world figurines and toys and can then use them within the game. Disney has also responded to Skylanders with their own game Disney Infinity, also using the same toys within a video game concept.
In my honest opinion, I think at the time Nintendo made the logical choice. The toys to life concept seemed like a gimmick, and many consumers figured it would have been nothing more than that. However clearly that was not the case and Skylanders has become a franchise loved by many. Do you think Nintendo made the wrong move by rejecting Activion’s proposal? Let us know what you think in the comments.