How Ubisoft came up with its Starlink: Battle for Atlas toy-game hybrid

Posted byby Dean Takahashi
August 21, 2018
Updated June 19, 2025
8 min

Ubisoft is really late to the party for the “toys-to-life,” market with Starlink: Battle for Atlas. And that could be a good thing.

Activision and Toys for Bob pioneered the market with Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure in 2011. By 2014, the toy-game hybrid had generated more than $2 billion in revenues from the sales of video games and more than 175 million action figures.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.