Will Disney Infinity Hurt Skylanders?

Skylanders has been an unbelievable success. It’s been less than two years since the launch of Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure, but Activision has managed to sell more than 100 million figures, earning over $500 million with no sign of slowing down.

This year, Skylanders will face its first direct competition in the form of Disney Infinity, which will launch against fall’s Skylanders Swap Force. IGN sat down with Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg to discuss that competition, plus why the Skylanders franchise has been so successful and how it can continue to grow.

“We never focus on our competition,” Hirshberg told IGN regarding Disney Infinity. “With the level of success that we’ve been able to achieve with Skylanders, it was only a matter of time until other competitors entered into the genre we pioneered here. That’s fine. We stay focused. You never win the race by looking over your shoulder at the other runners. You win by making the best games you can.”

“What we stayed focused on with Skylanders is the fact that Skylanders is almost a franchise that’s built on magical innovations,” Hirshberg continued. “That magic moment of toys coming to life in the first game, it captivated young gamers. We saw their eyes pop out of their heads. We knew that we couldn’t rest on our laurels. We needed to continue to deliver those kinds of novel, magnetic moments, and so with Swap Force, we’re showing that we’re not taking anything for granted. We’re not just doing a different version of the same game. We’re adding to the mechanic and adding to the genre.”

Hirshberg explained that the “swapability” of Skylanders’ new toy sets, which will allow players to mix and match toy parts to create new characters, is part of how the franchise is moving forward. “It still has to be simple Skylanders,” Hirshberg said.

“It's an incredibly simple idea. Complex maybe to execute, but when you experience it, I put the toy on the portal and it comes to life in the game,” Hirshberg explained. “Swap Force has the same thing. It’s so intuitive. Kids want to make these combinations. Even before they put them in the game, their imaginations are going wild. What will this guy do? What will this combination enable? Then they’ll be able to find out. The instant gratification of putting it in the game and seeing it is cool. It’s just a fun thing. We think we’ve got another real winner with Swap Force.”

Hirshberg explained that a major part of the franchise’s growth has been its flexibility. Players can use figures from the original Skylanders in every new installment and can even use toys across multiple systems -- and soon even across multiple generations.

“It’s been a huge priority for us thus far,” Hirshberg said of that accessibility. “Every toy, every Skylander that someone has purchased in their collection, with either Spyro’s Adventure or Giants, will not only be usable in Swap Force, but will be enhanced and better than ever in Swap Force. We’ve added jumping. We had to go back and add jumping to all of the Giants and all of the Spyro’s Adventure characters. We have a new graphics engine with Swap Force, so we had to re-render everyone. They look better than ever. They have new powers.”

“I think that the forward compatibility that we’ve baked into the strategy here is a huge competitive advantage,” he continued. “On day one, you leave with the Skylanders Swap Force starter pack and go home, you’ve already got so many options and so many experiences to have if you’ve already invested in a collection. It’s something we’ve been very committed to. It’s not easy. You can imagine, if you’re Vicarious Visions, it’s hard enough to make a great game just with new characters. Then you have to figure out how the Giants are going to fit into this world. But we’ve done it and we’ll stay committed to it. It’s something that our fans really appreciate it.”

Hirshberg also commented on the continued growth of the franchise’s development. Moving beyond Toys For Bob, the developers of the original Skylanders, the console versions Swap Force are now in the hands of Vicarious Visions, with a Wii version being handled by Beenox and a 3DS version coming from n-Space.

“On one hand, I think that makes things more complex, because you have different strong creative visions riffing on the same theme, and that’s always going to spark lively debate,” Hirshberg said. “But you also get the benefit of different creative visionaries participating in building the same brand. What we get pretty good at pretty quickly is figuring out what the DNA is, what the elements are that we don’t want to change from year to year, that everyone needs to embrace. Whether that’s a tonality or a look and feel. But then, wherever we can, we allow pretty wide guardrails, so that our development teams can bring a lot of creativity and innovation.”

Hirshberg compared the multiple development system to Activision’s other megafranchise, Call of Duty.

“I think the degree to which we’ve been willing to let Call of Duty reinvent itself every year, Treyarch games, they all feel like Call of Duty games, but they feel very different from Infinity Ward games. They both feel like Call of Duty games somehow. They get those core tenets right. But their takes on the franchise are different. I think we would love to emulate that kind of success with Skylanders. So far, so good. Looking at Vicarious Visions, I think they’ve taken what Toys for Bob did, which was so innovative and so wonderful, and they’ve brought their own unique flavor to the recipe as well.”

Skylanders Swap Force will hit Xbox One, Xbox 360, 3DS, Wii U, Wii, PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 in North America on October 13, Australia on October 16 and Europe on October 18.