Quote Originally Posted by UltraMarginal View Post
on a side note, I don't think the skylanders or Disney infinity download anything from the toys, it's just an RFID tag inside the toy that when close enough to the RFID reader in the game base is read and unlocks the game character and data that is pre-installed on the game disk or downloaded from the interwebs as required by the game.
incredibly cheap to produce and a massive money spinner.
Don't know about the Disney Infinity figures, but I remember one of the early selling points of the Skylanders figures was that they would level up and have unique stat improvements/weapons/clothes that would stay with the individual figure and could be carried between different games.

Admittedly, you could do a lot of that via an internet-based database, but you'd be dealing with a lot of unique codes.