Skylanders Imaginators – will it end up as the last one?

Activision studio Vicarious Visions will now begin to work with Bungie on Destiny, as doubts are raised about Skylanders’ future.

Bungie has announced that they’re ‘partnering’ with Skylanders developer Vicarious Visions to expand the ‘Destiny Universe’, causing many to question the future of the Skylanders franchise.

Disney already abandoned the toys to life franchise, when they cancelled the Disney Infinity franchise earlier this year. And now it’s rumoured Activision may be about to give up on Skylanders.

At one point, Skylanders – which invented the whole toys-to-life concept – was one of the most profitable franchise in gaming, but the weight of yearly releases and ever more expensive extras seems to be suffocating interest (where have you heard that one before?).


Join us in welcoming Vicarious Visions to the party.https://t.co/w0EeVsjwhZ pic.twitter.com/q0VvzXeUpd — Bungie (@Bungie) December 8, 2016

Because they never chart highly, and all the profit comes from the toys themselves, it’s difficult to tell whether the games are doing well by looking at the charts. But Activision’s recent financial results show that sales of this year’s Imaginators were down 41% on last year’s SuperChargers.



Imaginators sold only 66,000 copies in the US during its launch month, which according to Activsion themselves was below expectations. Viewing figures for Netflix show Skylanders Academy have also been disappointing, with many surprised it took so long for an animated tie-in to show up.

Skylanders was created by developer Toys for Bob, who also made Imaginators, but for our money the best entries have all been by Vicarious Visions – who alternate with Toys for Bob to make a new sequel every other year.

That means this year should be their turn but the Bungie announcement seems to imply they’ll be otherwise engaged. Especially as Destiny 2 is due out next year.

Vicarious Visions are a big studio though and it could be that they’re helping out Bungie and making a new Skylanders at the same time. They do often work on side projects, and at the moment are handling the PlayStation 4 remasters in the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy.

But if no new Skylanders game is announced for next year (which usually happens around May/June) then that may well be it for the franchise. Leaving Lego Dimensions as the only remaining toys-to-life game…

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