Say you put Activision’s Skylanders in a room with Disney’s Infinity – what would happen? Well, it’s hard to know for sure if Pop Fizz could beat up Captain Jack Sparrow (though not too hard since he is Jack Sparrow after all), but one thing we do know for sure is that Activision is willing to put up a tough fight.
Skylanders has done so well in sales and response since its initial release, and now Activision has Skylanders SWAP Force set to be released Fall 2013. They plan on making this Skylanders “supported by the largest sales and marketing campaign in Skylanders franchise’s history.” This comes in no surprise given that Disney is also marketing Activision’s first competition around the same time period in Disney Infinity.
According to A List Daily, “this marketing battle is going to be shelf space and retail positioning” in order to duke it out for the upcoming holidays. Skylanders has veteran status and an already large base of characters, but on the other hand Disney has much more globally recognized characters. In fact, if it wasn’t for the fact that you had to use actual physical versions of Disney’s characters in order to play the game I’d say it could easily be taken up by an older base of kids more so than Skylanders could.
Activision will also have tough competition for the 2013 holiday season with Call of Duty, which will be in a war against EA’s Battlefield 4. Again, the winner of this battle could be all about who is able to market better, and according to the A List Daily, CoD had “a strong visual presence on the retail floor” last year. However, as much as this is important given that with today’s modern technology the need to acquire such games physically in stores has become less and less a necessary, you have to wonder what else might be planned.
In the end, we’ll have to wait a while before we know the victors, but in the meantime it might be wise for Disney and EA to check their six.
Published: May 15, 2013 08:27 am