Pretty sure only Dark Spyro was exclusive. Ignitor will be out individually in the last wave, and Stealth Elf was already available separately. Dark Spyro plays identically to Spyro, so you aren't missing anything.

I've noticed that people who actually play the game are significantly less bitter about the business model. There's something tangible about swapping the toys and having the toys save your character's progress that really develops an attachment.

Nope. You may, however, have missed the thing where people went BANANAS over the R2-D2 themed X360.

Yeah, it's been ridiculous. There's an online tracker that updates every minute for Skylanders available online, but there's usually shipping fees involved (unless it's Amazon, in which case the characters are usually gone within minutes after becoming available).

@BigBorrells

Good points, all of them. I was speaking strictly of the media coverage of his career and the accompanying 'worship' of his Christian fans, but I fully agree with you that his stances on these issues are awful.

Aha. Well, THAT is true, but it's a slippery slope. There are certainly a ton of misogynists in pro sports, if that were the litmus test for hating a player then you'd have a hard time rooting for any team.

Quite honestly, the problem with Tebow isn't Tebow, it's the bazillion nutjobs that are proclaiming him "Jesus' Anointed QB". He's been pretty humble about the whole thing, and yes he's not hiding his faith, but overally I think he's handled this as well as someone could. He's not boasting, he's not overly cocky. …

It's already on the disc, primarily because they wanted to keep the 'magic' of a kid putting the toy on the portal for the first time and not have to do some kind of install process which would break the illusion. Half of all Wiis are offline anyways, so if you work backwards from that, it makes sense.

The author appears to be saying that the genre died because the controller wasn't used enough outside of music games?

Are you upset because of the change of how he looks, or because this isn't a 'real' Spyro game? Being mad at ATVI because they put Spyro in Skylanders is like being mad at Nintendo for including Mario in Mario Party. It's a new franchise, similar to how N created SSBM but included Mario.

...because it is fun. No, really, the answer is that simple. It is a visceral experience to place the toys on the portal and swap when you want to. Try it sometime and you will be surprised how well it works.

Made a game that sold more units in 3 months than the entire Legend trilogy did in 6 years?

Not yet. From the 3DS version, the only character that was labeled 'exclusive' was the Dark Spyro. I think that means that Ignitor will be available alone, but none of the waves released so far have him. The last wave is supposed to come in the spring, so I bet he's part of that.

Yeah, the 3DS version and the console versions are complementary to each other. The 3DS is shorter and has less features but if you've got a 3DS it's one of the best things you'll find for the platform that's not a Nintendo re-release.

Somebody found this at work, it's a tracker of what Skylanders are available online and at what prices.

This. I'm really curious what the Activision haters thought Activision should have done when they found out that W+Z were planning on leaving and taking IW's top talent with them. ATVI has a responsibility to its shareholders to make sure that nobody is able to devalue one of their studios in such a fashion. If…

You may already know this, but I work at a company with dozens of TV screens, you won't believe how many people have the TV set to fill a 16:9 screen but the game console is set to output 4:3 non-widescreen and they can't tell the difference, even though the game is stretched horizontally to fill their HDTV.

She has no choice. Otherwise she'd have to start parenting.

SKYLANDERS CHESS RUINED MY CHILDHOOD