Skylanders Swapforce announced – Australian sales figures for the franchise revealed

If you haven’t seen or played Skylanders you’ve probably been living under a rock, or don’t have kids.  Skylanders is a game available on multiple platforms which uses real-life figurines to bring the game to life.  Today, Skylanders third iteration SwapForce was announced and there’s little sign of the sales phenomenon slowing.

Here in Australia over 2.7 million toys have been sold (the figurines used in the game on Xbox, PS3, Wii, 3Ds), with over 1 million of those being in just 4 months after the launch of the second series “Skylanders Giants”.  With over 440,000 copies of Skylanders games in Aussie homes it’s little surprise that Skylanders has been the number 1 kids game since October 2011.

In fact, while the franchise has seen over $1 billion in sales and over 8 million games and 100 million toys sold globally, here in little old Australia for a period of a few weeks last year we actually outside the US.  That’s thanks mainly to our annual “Toy Sales” at all the big retaillers however it’s certainly no mean feat.

Today the latest version of the game was announced.  Called SwapForce the new Skylanders will be available in Spring 2013 and by the looks of it, it’s going to be a load of fun, and bring a whole load of new toy sales to the company.

The game comes with an all new “Portal of Power” to enable the new functionality which includes 16 character figurines which can be snapped in half and the top and bottom halves interchanged to create a total of 256 possible character combinations to give you new skills and techniques for the situation you are in.

Each character has a two word name, with the top and bottom halves of the character taking the first and second names respectively to allow the “swapped” characters to have a clear and unique name taking the name of the top and bottom half of the new character.

There are also 16 new standard characters in addition to the forward compatibility of all the Spyros and Giants game figurines.

It’s a runaway train that’s not looking to stop any time soon, but Skylanders is good clean family fun for all ages. With a late 2013 availability, best to start saving for the Christmas wish list right now.