It looks like Lego is finally getting into the toys-to-life business, taking on Activision's incredibly popular Skylanders games and Disney's richly diverse pop-culture universe of Disney Infinity.
A Reddit user this morning posted a picture of a bundle for a Wii U game entitled Lego Dimensions. The bundle includes the game, a Lego toy pad, bricks to make a Lego Gateway, a Lego Batmobile and three minifigs: Batman, Gandalf and Wyldstyle.
According to a Toys R Us listing, the game is coming to the Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, Playstation 4 and Wii U and the starter bundle will cost $99.99.
The game is being published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and developed by Traveller's Tales, a studio with a long, successful history of creating Lego games based on a variety of properties including Star Wars, DC Comics, Indiana Jones and the Hobbit movies. The studio is currently working on Lego Jurassic World and Lego Marvel's Avengers.
Here is the description of the bundle:
"When a mysterious and powerful vortex suddenly appears in various LEGO® worlds, different characters from DC Comics, Lord of the Rings and the LEGO Movie are swept away. To save their friends, Batman, Gandalf and Wyldstyle bravely jump into the vortex to rescue their friends and fight to save all of LEGO humanity.
Let your creativity be your guide as you build the LEGO Gateway to adventure, journeying through unexpected worlds and teaming-up with unlikely allies on the quest to defeat the evil Lord Vortech. Play with characters you never thought you could see in a LEGO game together, using vehicles and weapons you never thought possible. LEGO Bad Cop driving the DeLorean Time Machine: why not?! The Ninjago Masters of Spinjitsu fighting alongside Wonder Woman ... yes, please! Get ready to break the rules, because the only rule with LEGO Dimensions is that there are no rules.
The LEGO Dimensions Starter Pack is all you need to begin - build your base and embark on a fantastic quest."
The leak comes after three days of teasing images were posted on social pages for a variety of properties including DC Comics, The Lord of the Rings, The Lego Movie and the Back to the Future trilogy. The images shows Lego versions of characters from all of the properties counting down to an announcement on April 9 and used the hashtag "Breaktherules".
The new Lego game enters a market that was both established and dominated by Activision's Skylanders games. To date, the Skylanders franchise has brought in more than $3 billion through the sale of video games and 240 million toys world wide. Last year, Skylanders was the top selling children's video game and action figure line worldwide. The franchise is currently ranked as the fifteenth top selling of all time.
The nearest competitor, Disney Infinity, was outperformed by 30 percent globally, according to Activision Blizzard. But Disney's entry into the toys-to-life market is no slouch either. Three months after its release, the first game sold more than a million copies.
Where Skylanders is based on entirely new creations, Disney Infinity uses established characters from Disney's many movies, cartoon and television shows. In its second iteration, the franchise introduced Marvel super heroes to the game.
While Lego is getting into a competition with two well-established brands, the company isn't coming empty handed. Thanks to the long partnership with Warner Bros., any game created with the two companies will have access to a wide variety of properties including DC Comics, The Matrix, Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit and the incredibly successful The Lego Movie. It's unclear which of those rights would include the right to create video games. Most recently, Warner Bros. purchased the rights to the video game franchise Five Nights at Freddy's.
More, official details are expected to hit later this morning. Stay tuned.
Update: It's official. Find out a lot more details right here, including our first look at minifig Marty McFly in action and the release date.
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