Hasbro was on hand to talk about toys on the latest San Diego Comic Con. However, they opened up quite a bit when they were asked about making more video games.
Just to put things in context, the reason this even came up is because of Hasbro’s latest Transformers toys. They do have an active line right now called Transformers Studio Series Gamer Edition.
These are toys based on how Transformers appeared in video games. In particular, Hasbro has been focusing on Transformers: War for Cybertron, the Activision and High Moon Studios game from 2010.
Now, of course, that was 13 years ago. Right now, Hasbro’s next big Transformers game is Transformers: Reactivate, coming to PC and consoles and with an open beta coming this year. But Hasbro is actually pretty open about making more games, and their ambitions are as high as you can imagine.
We’ll share the full exchange from the SDCC floor, courtesy of Transformers World, below.
“Q: Are more video game franchise collabs possible since they’ve done a few things like that before?
A: It’s interesting, collabs continue to grow, and companies are approaching us, so everything is always on the table. We definitely want to partner with video game companies, clearly Nintendo partnered with Lego and they made a Nintendo system, or there was the Super Nintendo Transformer at one point in Japan, like we would love to be able to do something along those lines. Any company out there, like I don’t know, a partnership with Sega, a partnership with Microsoft or something, Sony – even just to make a Playstation, would be awesome.
Q: Maybe some sort of crossover with a game like Warframe for example? They have characters that are called Prime Warframes, that would be interesting.
A: Yeah, some of their designs are very Michael Bay-esque.
Q: Or maybe Transformers Pokemon and get a whole new group of fans collecting.
A: Ah, the dream, yeah.”
Is Pokemon really the biggest game to cross over with? Maybe it depends on the franchise. When Pokemon Conquest, a crossover with Nobunaga’s Ambition, released on the DS just two years after Transformers: War for Cybertron, it sold a respectable 345,000 units. When Niantic swayed Nintendo and The Pokemon Company to make Pokemon Go, it became the most downloaded app on both iOS and Android in the week it came out, an immediate that almost instantly changed the mobile gaming industry.
Pokemon Transformers will probably find itself somewhere in between these two games, but will definitely be a guaranteed hit that fans will remember for years. For something that huge to work, though, Hasbro and Nintendo will have to have a design document that will make it successful for decades.
In any case, that’s not a game that exists right now, but wouldn’t it be something? It’s a dream game for us too.
