Instead of catching Pokemon in the game, you buy a $10 figurine of the Pokemon you want to be able to add it to your team.

Gotta buy 'em all?

It would sell like hotcakes.

Wow. Good job. You've identified one of the few things that would actually make this franchise worse.

It would be ridiculously successful, bu I highly doubt that Nintendo would go down that route.

thirded. Half the fun of this game is being able to catch and freely trade pokemon to other players... if it went the Skylanders route, the only way to catch a new pokemon would be to buy a new figure from the store (talk about a logistics horror, they'd never be able to keep them in stock!), and the only way to trade one to a friend over the internet would be to physically send them your figure and hope the postal service doesn't lose either your figure or their figure in the process. You'd also have to worry about having an extra peripheral connected to your handheld in order to read the information from your figures every time the game loads, making what was previously a very portable handheld series into something that's not as easy to bring onto a plane (where space in your bags is incredibly valuable!) or on a road trip (god forbid you accidentally forget one of your precious pokemon at a McDonalds somewhere along the way to grandma's house two states over, lol). it'd be an all-around nightmare, and there's no way it would have become the beloved series it is now if it had started off the Skylanders route.

that said, I could see them coming out with a spin-off series of some sort, but a main-series Pokemon game using figurines instead of catching and trading your own in-game? quickest way i can think of to kill the series.

Would probably sell well; however it would have all the aforementioned problems and more.

fifthed.

Sixthed...?

Whatever. I think Geonjaha is right.

Yes, he's right. The only people who would fall for that horrible marketing scheme are ~10 year old kids who never had a Charmander/Squirtle/Bulbasaur.

I'm not saying he's wrong either. Just that its something that could happen if Nintendo happened to see how popular Skylanders is and wanted to follow the same path.

Didn't they do something similar with the e-reader?

They did some special event pokemon but they now have a better way to do that.

Lucky number 7thed.

Sadly, I could see Capcom doing Mega Man Skylanders.

I think Pokemon cards would be a much better fit since the 3ds can pick up the cards in AR and/or the Wii U game with the NFC. Plus easier to collect and trade with others as well as use in real life and store/carry. Of course this will be a spin-off and not main stream, that would be silly. If they had that, I would so buy it. Then again I would buy the figurines since I have done something similar in the past (looks at 2001 thinkchip cyndaquil and raichu figurines).

Aren't there too many Pokemon in a game to do this?

The likely reaction to the idea at Nintendo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeoB1voCit4

Got to buy them all!

They couldn't possibly go 'Skylanders' for a mainstream series without turning away Pokemon fans that have been following since Red and Blue (such as myself). If they did, I, along with many others, would throw a fit and likely boycott Nintendo. The games just wouldn't work without the catch and battle mechanic. Such is the basis of Pokemon. However, if they decided to use that technology in a spin-off series, I would likely be living on the street after selling everything I own in order to pay for Pokemon figurines.