'Skylanders Battlecast' Trades Toys For Collectible Cards

Ben Silverman
Updated
(Credit: Activision)
(Credit: Activision)

Activision’s popular Skylanders series has generated billions of dollars by selling gamers millions of toys. Now it’s aiming to get a piece of another lucrative pie: the collectible card game.

Due out for iOS, Android, and Amazon devices in 2016, Skylanders: Battlecast is a free-to-play game that lets players scan real-world, physical trading cards into mobile devices and use them in a card dueling game set in Skylands. Players can also buy digital card packs if they don’t want to bother with the real deal.

If only we had some awkward kids who are totally having real fun and are absolutely not actors showing off how this works. Oh look!

According to Activision, Battlecast will include some characters that, when scanned, seem to function in a similar way to the Nintendo 3DS's AR cards. The game will include both a single-player campaign and online multiplayer.

If it all looks a bit like My First Hearthstone, well, that would make plenty of sense. Hearthstone has raked in obscene amounts of cash for game maker Blizzard, who also happens to be a subsidiary of Skylanders publisher, Activision. Aha.

The next official game in the Skylanders franchise, SuperChargers, arrives September 20.

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