Mobile Gaming Platforms Go Head-to-Head: The Walt Disney Company (DIS), Electronic Arts Inc. (EA), Activision Blizzard, Inc. (ATVI)

Traditional gaming is not going away, but it will be accompanying mobile gaming. Tapped Out is light on gameplay, but appeals to fans of the massively popular Simpsons, and netted EA $23 million in 3 months. Updates keep rolling in, with the recent Valentine’s update adding a bunch of new content. Origin has been around for a while, but EA is only just starting to really leverage it. Mobile and handheld revenue was $100 million for the same 3 months, so that one game accounted for a fourth of mobile revenues.  Meanwhile, Activision is coming out with a new platform with the massively successful Skylanders series. It will benefit substantially over time from a conscientious approach to mobile gaming. Mobile gaming is successful over long periods of time.

Skylanders and Disney Infinity is Digital and Physical

Taking a page out of ATVI’s Skylander’s playbook, Disney is planning a video game that involves buying real plastic figurines to obtain in-game characters. I am not sure of the specifics since I will not be playing the game. However, I know this has been done before in various forms. There were some handheld games that involved power-up cards that had a barcode on it that I seem to remember from childhood, but none were very good or lasted long. Apparently, Skylanders is a good game.

This strategy is an interesting one because it has the chance of capturing some revenue from video games as well as retail toys. As a child, I preferred the SNES over plastic figurines, so I am surprised at the success of the Skylander figurines. A two-pronged approach could really bring in the money, but Disney is a diverse entertainment company so you would need to look at all the other aspects of the business to come to a real decision.

Skylanders as a franchise has crossed $500 million in retail sales, which is pretty fantastic considering that retail has seen a marked decline when it comes to video games. Skylander’s success is a guide to the profits Disney could see. That kind of revenue is nothing to sneeze at even if it takes a while to get there.

The article Mobile Gaming Platforms Go Head-to-Head originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by Nihar Patel.