There is a question which has haunted me for many years pertaining to the popularity and decline of Skylanders... What happened? And why was its inevitable fall so utterly abrupt?
- Within 15 months of the launch of Skylanders Spyro's Adventure (the first entry in the franchise), Skylanders had generated an unprecedented $1bil in revenue. This figure would balloon up to $3bil less than two years later. It had been reported by Activision that revenue from Skylanders had been outpacing the likes of even Call of Duty, yet less than two years later, Skylanders Imaginators would debut with a measly 66k physical copies sold during it's launch *month* in the US.
- By February 2013, over 100 million Skylanders figures had been sold. A little over two years later (June 2015), it was reported that an additional 150 million figures would be sold. Between June 2015 and April 2017, however, only 50 million figrues would be sold. This is an >65% drop in figurine sales within two years.
- The reveal trailer for Skylanders Trap Team would rake in over 20 million views in Spring 2014. One year later, this figure drops down to 5 million for the reveal of Skylanders Superchargers, followed up by Skylanders Imaginators in June 2016 with 1 million. That's a 95% drop in viewership.
My theory is that Skylanders had filled a void left by Nintendo from late-2011 to mid-2014. Once games like Smash U, Splatoon, and Super Mario Maker started hitting the market, Skylanders would quickly fade into the background. By Summer 2016, Activision saw the writing on the wall, as Skylanders Imaginators had not recieved much marketing (especially appearent from the lack of any prerendered trailers and short films which had been present with all prior entries), lack of any new or original music in the main game, the substaintial decrease in the number of characters being sold, an immediate shift toward Crash Bandicoot with VV in 2017 and Spyro with TfB in 2018, decrease in playable levels from 20+ to only 10, etc. What do you think?
Last edited by firebush03 - on 31 August 2024
