Hirschberg insists that this will add to their overall value not just as parts of a video game, but also as toys beyond the virtual, screen-based world kids are so often glued to. For the first time, players will be able to mix and match different parts of the action figures. Hirschberg told NBC News that the 'Skylanders' franchise is taking the opposite direction with the upcoming 'Swap Force' series, due out in October. Available for $4 a pop exclusively at GameStop (the game itself is just $18 as a digital download through the Nintendo eShop), there aren't any new Pokémon to be found here necessarily, but the action figures have at least been stylized as collectibles in their own right, bearing a cute resemblance to their polygonal in-game counterparts. ' The Pokémon 'Rumble U' toys, meanwhile, are entirely optional, giving the player's virtual Pokémon extra powers to take into the battle arena. Roper said that Disney wanted to make the characters feel more like collector's items than simple playthings - what you'd see at a comic book store, rather than in the Walmart kids aisle. With that much money on the line, the question is whether or not the 'Infinity' characters actually make good toys. 'Skylanders' has a 'first-mover advantage in terms of consumers and retailers,' 'Disney Infinity' has an 'iconic, well-loved' brand name, and 'Rumble U' taps into that 'gotta catch 'em all' mentality that's made Pokémon what it is today. 'All three of these offers have their own strengths,' Piers Harding-Rolls, an analyst at IHS Electronics and Media, told NBC News. But now that the time for the great game-toy battle has come, how will kids choose? Seeing as Activision has made more than $1.5 billion off two 'Skylanders' games since the series debuted in 2011, Hirschberg has a point. 'It was only a matter of time,' he added. 'As they say, it's the highest form of flattery,' Eric Hirschberg, CEO of the 'Skylanders' publisher, told NBC News of the competing products. Meanwhile, Nintendo will begin to roll out an interactive Pokémon army at the end of August, to pair with the Wii U game, 'Rumble U.' 'Disney Infinity,' a mashup of beloved Disney and Pixar's franchises (Captain Jack Sparrow, Sully the monster, etc.) with similar gameplay just hit the stores.

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