LEGO Dimensions has come to an end, according to a report from Eurogamer . While publisher Warner Bros. Interactive hasn’t confirmed the news, Eurogamer says sources close to the matter have confirmed the planned Year 3 content will no longer release.
A number of reasons have led to the end of LEGO Dimensions , including bad business, high costs and low sales. One of the biggest causes come from LEGO itself. All Dimensions add-ons include real LEGO bricks, which aren’t cheap. In fact, the value of LEGO pieces has been shown to grow in value faster than gold . But custom LEGO bricks are even more costly and seeing as how many of the extra packs feature one-off brick designs, the cost of production becomes prohibitively high.
The tie-ins for Dimensions haven’t all worked out either. Year 2 for the toys-to-life game revolved around Ghostbusters , Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them and LEGO Batman . None of those franchises really got that popular, so these big names didn’t end up paying off for Dimensions’ sales.
Dimensions was also asking too much of developer TT Games. More than 60 packs have been launched in two years for LEGO Dimensions across the PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PC and Wii U. The amount of work that must have gone into simply submitting builds to Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo had to have taken forever, let alone actual development of all the new content.
Eurogamer says plans for Year 3 included adding the Flash, more Doctor Who content and finally wrapping up the base game’s story with a Lord Vortech pack. Although the team intended to move The Lord Vortech content to the end of Year 2 to wrap up the story, it has since been dropped altogether.
Interestingly, reports also suggest TT Games was working on a new peripheral that would allow LEGO fans to build physical contraptions that could then be scanned into Dimensions . The developers have made a working prototype camera that can scan anything in a five-by-five block size that would get recognized by the game. It sounds like this device works, so it may end up as part of a different game in the future.
This insider report pretty much put to a close the toys-to-life genre. Disney Infinity has been shut down and Skylanders has no plans to continue. The closest thing to the genre that exists now are Nintendo’s amiibo figures, but those aren’t needed to play games and many figures can be used for different games. Unfortunately, even amiibo figures have slowed down its release since Super Smash Bros. 4 released.
So what do you think? Are you sad to see LEGO Dimensions go out without so much as a whimper? Do you think this means the toys-to-life genre is done? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.
