Skylanders Could’ve Been A Nintendo Exclusive
In the latest “What the hell is wrong with Nintendo?” news, the big N apparently passed on the opportunity for the massively successful Skylanders franchise to be a Nintendo exclusive, according to IGN.
"“[Nintendo] spent a long time looking and looking,” said Toys for Bob co-founder Paul Reiche. “They were just like ‘We have never seen anything like this before.’ I’ve always wondered about the full meaning of that comment [laughs].”But Nintendo ended up passing. “We have no idea why,” said 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.”"
As the IGN article states, Nintendo passing on Skylanders’ exclusivity was probably the best in the long run for the series as being exclusive to one console-maker might have limited the series potential for success. That still doesn’t really explain what on Earth Nintendo was thinking when they passed on the deal.
Admittedly, Nintendo is probably in the process of developing their own Skylanders-esque franchise featuring their stable of well-known characters. They’ve already experimented with something in the vein with Pokemon Rumble U, and Miyamoto has hinted that plans for the future include a title that will take advantage of the Wii U Gamepad’s NFC capabilities.
Still, partnering with Activision on Skylanders to make it an exclusive franchise that you could only get on Nintendo consoles seems like a giant no-brainer. Especially if Nintendo let Activision do most of the hard work and merely licensed out their stable of kid-friendly characters for Activision to make use of in Skylanders titles. It’s the latest in a long line of articles showing that Nintendo just lives in their own little bubble with no idea of what’s outside and aside from the lightning in the bottle success of the Wii it hasn’t really been a healthy mindset for them to have since the days of their 16-bit supremacy.
What do you think GameSided readers? Does Nintendo have an ace up their sleeve with their own take on action-figure based games? Or was this a good opportunity they passed up and can’t possibly make up for even with their own efforts? Let us know in the comments!