skylanders david nathanielsz

skylanders swap 2

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LOS ANGELES — If you really want to collect all 16 toy characters for Skylanders: Swap Force and create and play more than 250 combinations from the swappable top and bottom halves of those characters, David Nathanielsz would be very happy.

Skylanders: Swap Force debuts as the third in the series of game-toy hybrid products that have sold more than $1 billion worth since 2011.  The new game has interchangeable body halves of Skylanders: Swap Force toys, so players can mix-and-match their collections to create new kinds of characters. The combos are an ingenious scheme to get kids to bug their parents about buying new Skylanders toys, which sell for around $10 each, not counting the $70 or so for the Skylanders starter pack with a portal.

We interviewed Nathanielsz, an executive producer at Activision’s developer Vicarious Visions, about competing against Disney’s Infinity toy-game hybrid and what’s going to be cool about Swap Force.

Here’s the video interview.