Nintendo doesn't make money off the Skylanders (or Disney Infinite) toys themselves guys. They only make money on the starter pack/game which is specific to one console.
The point is to top Skylanders/DI ... not to provide them a platform to sell $10 toys off of, where you are not getting any cut of that toy revenue.
It would also be to Nintendo's benefit to take over the retail space Skylanders/DI currently hog up ... it's a huge amount of shelf space.
The idea also should be to introduce kids to characters OTHER than just Mario/Pikachu.
Just a few years ago Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, etc. were considered B-tier characters for Marvel that most kids weren't all that familiar with. It was all about Spider-Man and the X-Men being Marvel's main properties.
But The Avengers and the Iron Man movies changed that, I think the key here is to get kids to love Fox McLeod and Pitt and Captain Olimar as much as Mario or at least as much as even Kirby.
It's a problem when the main target demographic for a Star Fox game would be a small group of 30-year-old Nintendo fans with younger kids not having a clue about these franchises. Make a TV show and some direct-to-DVD movie specials set in this universe and expand the knowledge of these characters through the game too.
