Toys for Bob studio head, Paul Reiche, recently spoke to Digital Spy about Skylanders: Giants, more specifically the Near Field Communication (NFC) aspects of Giants.  Most Nintendo gamers already know that the GamePad has NFC capabilities but Skylanders: Giants will be using the portal rather than the GamePad when it releases.  While one of Reiches’s reasons for this is that he believes the portal will remain a fundemental part of the franchise, he also told Digital Spy “The problem is, if you look at the NFC, it’s in the GamePad, which is really convenient if you want to do the traditional ‘swipe your card’, but trying to set a toy on there, it slides off.”  Ubisoft did at one point show the use of the NFC feature with toys in a very early Wii U video but Reiche says “Unfortunately, [Ubisoft] dropped that feature, and I think for potentially the same reasons, which is – for an ongoing game mechanic, it didn’t seem well-suited, as you are holding the GamePad.”  Toys for Bob also told Digital Spy that they are developing a new Skylanders: Giants toy called ‘LightCore’ SKylanders.  These LightCore Skylanders will light up not with the use of batteries but just by being near a NFC source.  Pauk Reiche explains, “If you take any of our new LightCore toys – any of our toys that have lights – and if you take them up to any NFC field, they’ll start to glow.”  So basically, what this means is when you set these LightCore Skylanders on the Portal of Power, then they will light up.  I don’t see this improving the gameplay experience at all but it could definitely increase the cool factor for a franchise that has already gained some steam based on the new innovation it has brought to video games.