Skylanders has resulted in 30 million toys being shipped and $500 million in lifetime sales in just under a year. The company is planning Skylanders: Battlegrounds and the free-to-play Skylanders: Lost Islands for iOS with the recent console installment Skylanders: Giants just being launched with a Skylanders: Battlegrounds Starter Kit coming soon to import the toy characters to the iOS games.
While this might sound like overkill, Activision Mobile VP Greg Canessa indicates that they’re not worried about burning people out. “If this was simply a matter of porting the games, we could risk brand saturation or overexposure,” Canessa said. “But I think by creating those complementary experiences, I like to think of it as more fleshing out of the world and creating different experiences on different devices.”
“We’re being pretty meticulous in terms of the experiences we’re creating, that are varied and interesting,” said Karthik Bala, CEO of Activision’s Vicarious Visions studio. “As a character-based franchise, we’re inspired by folks like Nintendo, who’ve really brought different dimensions to their character franchises, creating different kinds of gameplay experiences that drive engagement. That’s really important to us creatively and for our players.”
Source: GamesIndustry International
