No joke: I think I can see the future. And you can, too, if you follow me and a couple of games on a journey through multiple generations of video game software and hardware. But you’re going to have to trust me, because this is going to get weird.

If you want to see where video games are headed — where they’ll be, what they’ll look like and what you’ll be playing them on in the next few years — you need to study what Disney Infinity 3.0 and Skylanders SuperChargers did this year.

I know, I know: You don't care about those franchises. They’re for kids. They’re just marketing schemes designed to make parents buy toys and video games at the same time. Well, so were G.I. Joe and He-Man and Transformers, but those action figures didn't come to life on your TV. Well, OK, they sort of did, but you couldn't control them.

Even if that that were true, though, it’s not the point or what's significant. If you’re curious about the future of gaming, you should care about both franchises. They’re being bold in a way that most others aren’t.

Today, Skylanders — the series that created the toys-to-life market — and Disney Infinity — its successful competitor — are leading a migration from consoles to devices that, just a few years ago, would have seemed absurd to think of as gaming machines. They didn’t arrive in denatured form, either. They are the real and credible full games.

In an ecosystem full of sequels, Disney Infinity and Skylanders spent 2015 being more more ambitious than most. And I kid you not, after studying and playing these games across several platforms, including the new Apple TV, iOS, PlayStation 4, Windows PC, and Xbox 360, and talking to their creators, it’s difficult not to conclude that in their ambition lies some part of video gaming's future, both hardware and software.

We ran Disney Infinity 3.0 and Skylanders SuperChargers through their paces on the new Apple TV, the not-quite-a console released just a few months ago. Then we compared those games to their twins on other systems. Both show the potential — and limitations — of Apple's new set top box and the surprising amount of things we didn't realize we were missing from more powerful machines.

SAME GAME, DIFFERENT PLATFORMS

In early September 2015, Apple revealed a device that many who watch the Cupertino, California-based company had long predicted.

The new Apple TV is an evolution of the set-top boxes it has been producing for the last several years. Bigger and more powerful, its new heft brought an app store like its iPad, iPhone and Mac counterparts. And just like its sister platforms, the new Apple TV would support gaming.

This was possible, in part, because its refreshed hardware is based on Apple's line of tiny, power efficient microprocessors. A8 chip that debuted in the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus also powers the new Apple TV.

Must Read Why Apple TV games must all use the Siri remote, but that might not last

Onstage on the day of the unveiling, Apple invited a couple developers up to show off a couple of games. The first, a multiplayer version of Crossy Road, was a logical extension of a popular game on its smartphones and tablets. The second, Beat Sports, was a game created specifically for the new Apple TV, with motion controls reminiscent of Nintendo Wii games.

It was an interesting, if somewhat predictable showcase. Gaming was certainly part of the new Apple TV, but it certainly wasn’t Apple’s focus. The games we saw onstage looked intriguing, but they weren’t revolutionary, and they didn’t exactly seem to push the gameplay or graphical envelope. That's because, just like it does with the iPhone, Apple didn't build a video game console. It built multipurpose hardware, tied to its own ecosystem, both of which make playing games possible. Based on that alone, it seemed like the new Apple TV would be a bastion of casual games.

Things got much more interesting later that day, when Activision and Disney made two separate but related announcements: Skylanders SuperChargers and Disney Infinity 3.0 were both headed to the new Apple TV. Not versions of the console games, they said. Not separate, pared down experiences created for Apple’s unreleased hardware, either. The full games would appear on the new Apple TV in the same form they took on Microsoft’s, Nintendo’s and Sony’s consoles.

Those two announcements implied more about the hardware’s gaming capabilities than Apple cared to on stage.

Apple released the new Apple TV at the end of October. In the interim, we learned about a few odd rules, from the perspective of those who make and play games. Apple's rules require all Apple TV games to support the device's bundled Siri remote. Third-party controllers are available, too, but Apple's guidelines are clear. When Guitar Hero Live launched for the new Apple TV, we learned they weren't set in stone. That game doesn't use the Siri remote at all.

Must Read Apple TV is a radical rethinking of your relationship with the hardware and games you own

We also learned about Apple technology that's in full force on the new Apple TV, designed to eliminate the need to manage storage. Instead, the new Apple TV will do that for users. It's a technology designed to make things simpler for users, but it also poses challenges for developers, as the system purges and re-downloads assets on demand, as its storage needs fluctuate. Apple's rules also limited the maximum storage space that any app — including games — could use on the console. For small games, that didn't seem like it would be much of a problem. For bigger games whose installation footprint could be multiple times the size of Apple's maximum allowance, that seemed like a genuine engineering problem to solve. Apple anticipated this, and it built technology to make it possible. But there was no way to know if it would work or how the experience would be.

Here in mid-December, Skylanders SuperChargers and Disney Infinity 3.0 are both available for the Apple TV, just like they are on traditional gaming hardware. What was once a promise became a reality.

The question, then, became: Are they any good? After all, the new Apple TV has includes a radical rethinking of the relationship you have with your hardware. Is that acceptable for large games like these?

To find out, we played both games on the new Apple TV, and that gave us answers about whether or not they were any good on this not-console. But that’s when the question morphed. How did they hold up, in terms of graphics and performance, to their doppelgangers on other systems?

Polygon spoke with representatives for Skylanders SuperChargers developer Vicarious Visions as well as those at Disney about Disney Infinity 3.0. Both explained why they felt it was important to bring their consoles games to Apple’s new hardware. They told us about their philosophy about toys to life products generally. They also provided us with versions of their software and hardware to test and compare everywhere we could.

Disney Infinity 3.0

We covered Disney Infinity 3.0’s gameplay in our review, saying that "Disney has finally thrown open its vault of treasured characters and stories and wants you to play." We also said it made us laugh so hard that we nearly puked.

But would it make us throw up on the new Apple TV? And if so, who’d clean it up?

Disney Infinity 3.0 is available through the tvOS App Store, the only official way to get apps on the device. And that’s where the cleverness begins. If you don’t own the game, you can still download a version of it that’s free-to-play and includes a level based on the climax of the original 1977 Star Wars movie, A New Hope. If you buy the $99.95 starter pack for Apple TV, that download transforms into the full game.

As on other systems, the Disney Infinity 3.0 starter pack comes with a base, Anakin Skywalker and Ahsoka Tano figures, and access to the Twilight of the Republic playset. In effect, that lets you play within the world of The Clone Wars animated series.

How does it play on the new Apple TV? That depends on how you play it.

Controlling Disney Infinity 3.0 with the Siri remote isn’t great. It feels odd, as if you’re using a remote control instead of a controller — because that's exactly what you're doing. The Siri remote is functional, but neither the game nor the Siri remote were built with moving characters through 3D worlds, and it shows. Characters bumble around with extreme imprecisions, and I wouldn’t recommend it unless you’re up for a goof. It’s in there, perhaps, because Apple says it has to be in there. It can’t be in there because anyone thinks it’s particularly good.

But hope is not lost. Disney Infinity 3.0 mitigates that problem because the SteelSeries Nimbus, the poster child for Apple TV game controllers, ships with the starter pack. It’s in the box, and it is a fantastic controller. I mean that, too. The more I use it in various games, the more impressed I am with the Nimbus. It doesn’t feel like my memories of third-party controllers. It’s sturdy and reliable to the point that I have to remind myself that I’m not using hardware from a console manufacturer, long the gold standard for controllers.

The right controller makes all the difference in the world. Apple’s Bluetooth-based pairing makes setup drop dead simple. All you need to do is switch the controller on, and the Apple TV detects it within seconds, in our out of a game.

How’s the game perform relative to its console counterparts? Almost exactly the same, with a few caveats.

As we discussed above, the software that runs the new Apple TV, tvOS, places restrictions on the maxim file size of an app. For something so potentially big as Disney Infinity 3.0, developers have to shuffle data onto and off of the system, loading levels into an out of memory. That can happen in the foreground, preventing your from playing, or in the background, transparently. The latter is preferable. The former can range from understandable to perplexing.

When levels and characters get loaded on your system, you’d be hard pressed to find a difference between Disney Infinity 3.0 on Apple TV and Disney Infinity 3.0 on any other platform, aside from the obvious benefit of graphical fidelity on more powerful systems like the PS4 or a Windows PC. It took me staring at video side by side to tell any substantial differences.

When levels and characters aren't on your Apple TV, the results can vary dramatically. The Apple TV version’s loading is significantly pronounced compared to systems like the PS4 and Xbox 360. There’s no disc in a tray to stream levels from. There’s only the internet and internal storage that Apple TV manages and the internet’s nebulous cloud, from which the game loads levels.

To be fair, though, I've spent a lot of time with Disney Infinity 3.0 on four pieces of hardware during the last few weeks. Loading screens are par for the course — though, again, they're pronounced on the new Apple TV, almost certainly because of tvOS' app restrictions.

But, again, once you’re in the game, you’re really in the game. As in the real Disney Infinity 3.0, full of dialogue, voice acting, gameplay — all of the things that you’d expect if you were playing it elsewhere.