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Through an article by Polygon on the history of Skylanders Spyro’s Adventure, it has emerged that Nintendo had the opportunity to partner with Activision on the first game in the successful Skylanders series. According to the co-founder of Toys for Bob, Paul Reiche, Nintendo spent a long time considering the game, before ultimately passing on it.
“We have no idea why,” says Reiche. “Clearly, they have got properties well suited to this world. Why it is that they didn’t rush in here will probably haunt them for the rest of their days.”
Nintendo’s own Pokémon Rumble U is the closest that the developer has come to the toy-based video game genre, but it hasn’t embraced it in the same way as companies like Activision or Disney, which released Disney Infinity last year.
Reiche stated that, in his opinion, Nintendo could have done far better than Disney with the genre, and said that “If I was running Nintendo I would have jumped on this.”
Skylanders recently became one of the 20 highest-selling game franchises and we found its latest iteration, Skylanders: Swap Force, to be rather good. In fact, depending on which side of the Atlantic you live, you recently may even have had the chance to pick up either a Skylanders or Mario toy at McDonalds.
What do you guys think? Did Nintendo miss out on a golden opportunity here?
Source: IGN
Slightly off-topic rant here:
I have a grudge against this series due entirely to the state that Spyro is in. More than any other game, the original Spyro trilogy embodies my childhood. I stuck with the character through the giant misstep that was Enter the Dragonfly, the changed mechanics of Hero’s Tale, and the complete rewrite that was the Origin’s trilogy.
For me, the Spyro character redesign for Skylander’s was too much. It also KILLS me that Skylanders started off as a game in the vein of the original Spyro trilogy, but ended up being mostly a cash-grab.
I think it is a bit like the Rabbids – they were originally linked to Rayman in order to piggy back off the IP, but became so popular in their own right that they made it completely separate.
I agree with you though: Spyro 2 was one of the few games that I completed 100% at that time. Maybe they will bring him back like Rayman was with Rayman Origins?