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.