With Skylanders, Activision Blizzard has another big hit series on its hands. And it’s bigger than Angry Birds. Looks like their massive gamble paid off.
In a conference call today, Eric Hirshberg, CEO of the Activision Publishing division, made a surprisingly direct statement on the success of Skylanders, the new toy/video game hybrid for consoles and iOS devices. With 30 million toys sold and $100 million in revenue across toys and games in the quarter, said Hirshberg, Skylanders made more money than the entire business of Rovio’s Angry Birds franchise. Rovio announced today that Angry Birds has been downloaded more than 1 billion times, across both free and paid versions.
In a press release earlier today, Activison said that in North America and Europe, including accessory packs and figures, Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure was the No. 3 best-selling game overall in dollars across all platforms for the first quarter of 2012 and the number 1 selling kids’ title in dollars in the quarter.
Hirshberg noted that he could not comment on the split in revenue in toys versus video games. He also stated that while Skylanders did have some early issues with high demand and low supply, the company has increased capacity as of now and has made plans for a higher demand come the holiday season. The publisher has not made any decisions on changing prices for the coming year.
The numbers were further bolstered by the release of Skylanders Cloud Patrol, a game based on the franchise for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad users that features the Skylander characters as well as the ability to type in web codes to redeem and collect new characters in the game. Activision is also looking forward to Skylanders Giants, an expansion that will include larger scale toy characters and new gameplay.