My little brother guessed not so long ago that the new
Skylanders would go mini for their next installment, since they had already gone big in
Skylander Giants. Turns out that
Activision are actually one step ahead of young master Dane. The company has announced that
SkylandersSwap Force will be debuting at Toy Fair 2013 The concept is simple. To bring customisation to
Skylanders players. 16 new characters have been announced that will be totally swapable, creating 256 unique combinations you can sever and reconstruct. As with
Skylanders Giants, all the toys in previous collections will be backwards compatible with older toys. The new collection will however contain
Skylanders SWAP Force features 16 new SWAP Force characters, along with 32 core Skylanders characters (16 completely new Skylanders and 16 new versions of fan favorite characters from previous games) and eight newLightCore„ characters.
Here is a trailer featuring half of the 8 swapable chacraters. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHaGAXzmiTg&feature=youtu.be No news as to an exact release date yet, but I am going to safely assume that it will be in time for Christmas. Which will put it head to head with the new
Disney Infinity, a rivalry I can see waging war for many years. As an outsider,
Skylanders has always fascinated me. Activision seem to have always walked the tightrope of profit and fairness to customers
pretty well, and that is to their credit. It would have been easy to exploit the franchise for all its worth, but additions like backwards capability and being able to keep a portal from one game to the next has kept things more or less fair on poor parent's wallets. I have even had some brief hands-on experience with the game, and I think it could easily be this generations
Pokemon. In fact, in 10 years time, I am certain I won't be able to check my email with out being bombarded with nostalgic memes featuring Skylanders.