The latest craze in kids video games is named Skylanders Spyro Adventure. The kids love it and the business model will amaze you. The game itself is amazing because they were able to take the best features of popular games and put them all together. Most importantly they tied offline games such as Pokeman and the concept of physical cards with the video games on the television and the computer. The game works with Nintendo Wii, xBox and PS3, as well as online. The features I mentioned are the physical cards for each character as well as a physical figurine that you see in this image. You then place the Skylanders figure onto a portal and the character appears in the game. Here is where you can learn more about skylanders, where to buy them and what you need to play the game.

Skylanders Business Model
As a business individual you have to love this business model. What they have done is surpassed the video game market with an interesting plan to obtain additional revenue per user. Instead of just extracting the price of the video game from you they have the ability to easily 2x the average video game price and more than likely 10x or 20x it. Here is how they do it. You purchase the game an you must have at least one character to play the game. If you want to allow a second person to play you need to have purchased a second character. Of course to really have fun, and to do well in the game, you will need more characters. Each character has different abilities and some are needed to progress further in the game. Therefore you need to purchase more characters. The price of a character ranges from $9 and can be substantially more.

Who Owns Skylanders?
Skylanders Spyro’s Adventure is owned by Activision Blizzard, Inc (NasdaqGS: ATVI ). This is one video game business model that I believe will be copied and repeated by other companies as well. Long live Skylanders.