The once profitable and growing toys-to-life genre looks like it may be joining the plastic instrument trend of the early 2000’s as the next thing to be gathering dust in your closet. After last year’s abrupt termination of Disney Infinity, followed by the announcement this year that Skylanders, Activision’s annual franchise in the genre since 2011 franchise would be taking a year off, this left Lego Dimensions as the king of the mountain in a dying space. It looks like however that the hollow mountain in which Lego Dimensions is standing on is about to collapse if rumors are to be believed.

A website dedicated to Dimensions, Bricks to Life, recently spoke to sources close to the toys-to-life game who have indicated that a planned Year 3 roll out for the game is quietly being cancelled with the remainder of what’s left of Year 2: Beetlejuice, Goonies, Powerpuff Girls, Lego City Undercover and Teen Titans GO! being stretched further to cover the difference. You can read Bricks full report at the link below, but the primary reasons given for WB Games potentially closing down the project is much the same as that of Disney Infinity: sales. Anecdotally I can report of seeing cheap Dimensions toys at Dollorama, a Canadian discount franchise chain, of Year 1 fun packs and Bricks to Life has reported on similar sales in the US. The high cost to entry for Dimensions is largely due to a slow down of sales, as well as dwindling interest in toys-to-life, however WB Games decision to forego a full-on sequel like both Skylanders and Lego Disney Infinity before, instead introducing downlodable digital updates, has made it much more consumer friendly in comparison. That being said, these updates have also made the game fairly buggy as well with my progress in certain Adventure worlds getting completely erased after updates among crashes and other glitches.

While WB Games has yet to formally speak on the matter, it will be sad to see Lego Dimensions go away, especially seeing as there was the potential of the brands from Infinity like Star Wars, Pixar, and hopefully Marvel eventually join the game. Another silver lining of the story is that according to the report, those who were working mostly on Dimensions will return to making traditional Lego games. Keep checking back for further developments as they unfold.

VIA BRICKS TO LIFE