Activision Announces Skylanders Swap Force
After selling nearly 500 million dollars of Skylanders it really isn’t a surprise that Activision was going to keep cranking out the sequels with its bread winning series. Today they’ve announced the new Skylanders Swap Force will hit 360, PS3, Wii U and Wii this fall and feature a brand new type of Skylanders for your children to drive you crazy over. Hit the jump for more information.
If you are interested in the story behind them at all Skylanders Swap Force’s new characters come from Cloud Break Islands where a magical volcano has exploded sending them to Earth as toys. This imbued the Skylanders living there with the special ability to swap body parts (?!). Yes, you read that right. With the 16 brand new Swap Force characters coming out this fall you’ll be able to swap two separate characters top and bottom halves which of course affects their in game counterparts.
The bottom half of characters affects movement and the top half affects attack. For instance if you have a character who has flight you could take their legs and combine them with the top half of a character who shoots lava as an example. Now you have a flying magma shooting maniac ready to play with. The figures themselves connect via a magnet built into both halves of the character and any of the 16 swapping Skylanders can be combined to your heart’s content. Anyone can see the instant appeal here and parents probably doubly so. Kids (and adults for that matter) love this kind of stuff and this expansion is going to be the heart throb of every kid 15 and under (and more than a few adults I know).
In a move sure to make parents clutch their wallets protectively to their chests with a whimper: the new technology with the characters requires a purchase of a new Portal of Power. The sequel to the original Skylanders title was compatible with the older portal due to having no true update in the chips for the toys. In this release though the technology with the RF chips has had to advance rendering your old portal obsolete, or at least as far as the new figures are concerned. As a father myself I have to believe that a CEO somewhere is sitting in his chair laughing deviously and curling his obviously evil mustache. Skylanders Swap Force will introduce the aforementioned 16 new swappable Skylanders in addition to another refreshing of an older selection of 16 of the most popular Skylanders from previous sets.
I can certainly respect the business side of this because it’s utter brilliance. Kids love toys and they love video games, so combining the two into one super powerful addiction that is a huge moneymaker is such a no brainer that it’s crazy that nobody thought of it before Activision. The video game community has certainly made note since though. Disney Infinity is set to directly compete with Skylanders offering up toys that go in game across a multitude of their series and Wii U has an RF reader built in its base with Ubisoft already showing ways to take advantage. I would be shocked if Nintendo wasn’t at work with a Pokemon version of this technology as it would simply print money. This is a Trojan horse if you will, a natural extension of free to play that we will see much more of in the future.
As a parent it’s a little harder to see this as a good thing. It’s hard to argue with on one hand because you can complete the main game with what is in the starter set and my son plays with the toys on and off the screen so I’m getting bang for my buck. On the other hand it almost feels downright manipulative. It wouldn’t be that big of a deal if Activision hadn’t just released Skylanders Giants last year with not only bunches of new regular figures, but more expensive giants to boot. On top of that they refreshed older character for that expansion and are doing it again, which is kind of where I draw the line. Gamers of all ages always want the newest and best so upgrading figures we’ve already bought to newer figures with more powers is downright nasty.
Either way I’m sure I’ll be grudgingly buying and playing (yes and probably enjoying) this with my son come this Fall. We’ll keep you posted to any further developments as they break on this newest title.