darkSpyro

Pre-orders for Skylanders SWAP Force at retailers like Toys R Us, Target, Walmart and Best Buy now come with a free Lightcore Hex. Unfortunately it appears you have to wait until you actually get the game in October before you receive the Hex (despite being released in Australia recently).

The game has also now had its release date confirmed by EuroGamer as coming out on the 13th of October in North America, the 18th of October in Europe and the 16th of October in Australia.

It has also been announced for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, but obviously with no release date for the consoles themselves there's also no release date for those versions.


Along with those preorders are some new images of the packs, confirming for the first time exactly which two SWAP Force characters are in the Starter Pack, it's Wash Buckler and Blast Zone along with the "Series 3" equivalent Ninja Stealth Elf.

The 3DS Starter Pack has a completely separate line-up of toys, instead you get a different two SWAP Force characters (currently no names known but they are Undead and Air elements) as well as Volcanic Eruptor. So no duplicates like last time with Cynder and Tree Rex.


And from the Toys R Us preorder pages there are a few new screenshots that are now in the gallery.

Forum member xangor recently spotted this brand new Skylander in an image for a cap on Amazon.de (the image has since been removed).


Unfortunately no name for this new Magic character was revealed so you'll just have to come up with your own for the time being.

E3 2013 is now just over two weeks away so it's not long to wait until Activision finally release some official new information on Skylanders: Swap Force.

Introducing the third entry to the Skylanders series: Skylanders: Swap Force. The main new feature that Swap Force brings to the table is the 16 brand new characters that have swappable features.



Each of the sixteen "Swap Force" toys has two parts - the legs and the upper body. The legs control the movement, the upper body decides the attacks. You can take them apart and then mix-and-match the two halves with any of the other Swap Force toys, the game will recognise what you've put together to give you up to 256 different combinations (once you have all 16 of the Swap Force characters).



In terms of new toys, as well as the 16 swappable "Swap Force" characters there are 16 brand new "core" figures, these are new regular Skylanders without the ability to swap parts. There will also be eight LightCore characters and 16 returning "Series 3" characters with new Wow Pows.



Also coming with the game is a brand new, completely redesigned Portal of Power that you will need to get, the old ones will no longer work with Swap Force. But never fear, all of the old characters, both the Orange and Green base varieties, will still be fully functional in Swap Force.



On the developer side of things unlike the last two games Toys for Bob will not be developing Swap Force, instead Vicarious Visions will be taking the mantle (they previously made the 3DS version of Spyro's Adventure, the Wii U version of Giants and all of the iOS games) for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Wii U versions. The previous developer for the 3DS version, n-Space, will be resuming their development role on the 3DS version. And not forgetting the Wii, that's not being abandoned just yet and will be getting a version developed by Beenox.

The Starter Pack will come with two Swap Force characters (it'd not be much fun having only one) as well as a returning character and the brand new Portal of Power. No specific release date has been announced other than "this fall".

For further, more in-depth reading there are plenty of articles popping up all over the web following the press showing of the game, such as Wired, Engadget, Joystiq, Polygon, Giant Bomb, One of Swords, Metro.co.uk.

The folks over at Fusible.com have spotted several newly registered Skylanders domain names. Just registered on Wednesday one of these could possibly be the name of the third game:

Skylanders Kaos Alliance
Skylanders Nano Force
Skylanders Super Force
Skylanders Swap Force

Whatever the name turns out to be we won't have to wait too long to find out as it should hopefully be officially announced during either the Toys R Us New York event mentioned in the news post below (Feb 5) or during Toy Fair 2013 itself (Feb 10-13). But of course that still leaves plenty of time for speculation...