Quote: BifrostIt was promoted MONTHS before actually coming out (Superchargers came out Sep 2015, Battlecast on May 2017). That's what killed it. They stopped every attempt at marketing after the open beta on Australia, and then got surprised no one remembered the game by release - and most likely deleted the Cards to Life demo after their bonuses were up and no game show.
When was the cereal box promo? And the in-store displays? The comic fun packs that came with free cards?
I never played Battlecast - the idea of a game throwing out the thousands of dollars worth of toys I bought and asking me to buy trading cards instead (trading cards with very questionable trading ability at that) just didn't appeal to me - but, I get the impression there was a lot of issues in the development of the game and, mostly, it just wasn't very well received.
Again, I welcome them to prove me wrong and come up with a way to continue the franchise... but, frankly, let's be honest... the actual *gameplay* in the Skylanders series was never groundbreaking or anything. It was generally competent, occasionally awesome (the original 3DS launch title is still my favorite), occasionally not so awesome basic platformer gameplay with a dungeon crawler feel and some collect-a-thoning included. If the series hadn't (re-)invented the toys to life category and implemented it in such an awesome fashion, there's little chance the game would have really sold to the point where we got SWAP Force and beyond.
I just don't see a path for the series to really continue. Like I said, implementing the existing toys in a major fashion just isn't worth the development costs - and I think a lot of folks would see a new game that doesn't use all the existing toys as a no-go (remember how folks were upset that the accessory pieces and level unlocks did next to nothing as the series progressed? And how the vehicles were essentially only used for Superchargers? Imagine that, but for all 300+ toys).
This probably goes more in the 'What went wrong' topic, but, honestly, they messed up from the beginning. The number of toys didn't just kill our wallets, but it backed them into a corner where supporting them became such a double-edged sword.
Imaginators seemed like a swan song for the series from the outset, as supporting all the custom possibilities in future games would be a big investment. I sincerely wonder if they had started work on an Imaginators 2, but shuffled all that work into the expansions we got as DLC.