Can skylanders last?

[Michjeff]

Now that Disney has created this, do you think Skylanders can last? Think about Christmas season, do you think parents will buy their kids just random figures of skylanders? Or the iconic disney franchise characters? Also, now that disney has stepped up to this game style, do you think other companies will get into this genre? Maybe dreamworks? Universal?

Depends on how good Disney Infinity is as a game, I would think. Which we will know in a month.

If you look at the darkspyro forum, you can see that loads of people have many issues with the direction Skylanders has been taking. I still think it's a fun game, and I still love the figurines, but I can understand people getting annoyed with more and more things about Skylanders.

You do want more stuff to do with your little plastic friends, and I think that Disney is doing a lot of smart stuff compared to Activision. I would have loved Skylanders Giants to have had a huge hub, with loads of customization opportunities. You want to build a nice volcano home for your Eruptor, you want to have a silly alchemy shop for Pop Fizz, you want more opportunities to have a fun time to do, and not just play through the levels again and again. I really think in the long run this is absolutely central for a toy-based-game to work.

If the guys at Disney play it right, and everything seems to be pointing in that direction, they will be able to atomize Skylanders in a year. If the game is really good, that is.

I think Monochrome's on the right track, but if they added that people would complain that Skylanders is "ripping off" Disney Infinity.

My cousin has registered an account there and sometimes I hijack it and use it to complain about the downwards spiral of this series.

Skylanders simply can't last, with or without competition- there are more and more people being upset with the descisions the franchise has taken and not that many new people joining in. I think that Swap Force will be the last straw for many, and that Infinity will be an option some people who liked the toy idea of Skylanders, but not Skylanders itself, will take. I am sure that Skylanders will continue having fans(myself included- despite my hate for many things in the games and refusal to buy new entries), but the entry where Activision don't make oceans of money, they will simply stop altogether.

I think that it will die out by Skylanders 5 or 6 in 2015/2016(unless they do a massive turn around and bring back the MAGIC that the first game had and add a ton- TON- TON- more longevity within the actual GAMEPLAY instead of just more and more figures).

This is coming from someone who owns every figure released so far and a majority of the "Special" variants.

Dunno activision are well known for milking and flogging a dead horse.

My step-brother is the only person I know who still believes in the series, but I'm pretty sure he too will lose faith if Swap-Force doesn't have the "magic" of Spyro's Adventure.
As for me, I only ever got Spyro's Adventure.
Also, I do have a small fear that if Skylanders DOES go away, some of my favourite Skylanders will be lost in the world of forgotten video game characters.

I think it can make it. I don't understand why fans are starting to bash it.

[Michjeff]

All I know is if Skylanders and Infinity were exactly the same gameplay and features... Infinity would still win because of the names they have. You say woody and buzz and most people know what your talking about. You say bash and boom jet not to many parents would have a clue what your talking about.

@Dr. Turtle
SA has 22 chapters, Giants has 16 chapters, Swap Force is going to have 12 chapters. SA had 32 figures on the poster, Giants had 48 figures on the poster, Swap Force will have 56. That is the reason many fans are leaving the ship. They are giving us more new figures and more new things to do with our figures(see Quests), but they are not giving us enough of the Skylanders universe to explore with them, to keep it fun and fresh.

Replaying 12 levels over and over is not enjoyable or fun enough to last for a year. Swap Force does not look different or innovative enough gameplay-wise to many people: they added jumping and new platforming sections but from what has been shown, the majority of the main game is the same dungeon crawler we played two years ago. For all of us who like collecting and completing every figure, there isn't enough to do to keep it fresh. And you can say "don't buy/play every figure", and while that's true, we should be REWARDED more for having a huge collection. Don't forget the Series 1 figures everyone collected in SA did not unlock Heroic Challenges in Giants... Which was a huge kick in the butt if you didn't want to buy a second set of the same characters.

As of today my Giants collection screen says that I own 124 figurines(20 of which are Magic Items), and I've played Giants to death... I FORCED myself to finish everything and it got old a long time ago. A lot of people have so many figures that they could last the entire franchise with them, but the real grab in the games is trying every character. People are getting sick of buying all the new characters and having barely any game to go with them.

It isn't really fair to judge the entire game yet and there is still time to actually advertise the game's new features and prove us wrong("Missions" could make up for the lack of chapters if they were fun and varied enough). However, what they have shown thus far is generally unimpressive, and many of the fears people have are legitimate, since the same scenario happened with Giants, which was sssssooooo ssslllooowww-paced and boring to replay. SF certainly looks better than Giants is at this point, but an iPad 2 is better than an iPad 1, and those are barely different enough to warrant it.

@Michjeff This is off-topic, but Boom Jet is easily totally my favourite SF charatcer, like Sprocket was in Giants Still not buying the game, but I'm buying him as well as anything Tech-related as soon as I see them in the store!