Wizards of the Coast has today announced the latest video game adaptation of its popular TCG, Magic: The Gathering. A new title, named Magic Duels: Origins, will launch later this year on both the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One as well as on PC and tablet devices.
Origins will effectively replace Wizards’ Duels of the Planeswalkers series which has been knocking around since 2009 when it first launched on the Xbox 360. Aside from dropping the tongue-twisting title, this latest adaptation will also be free-to-play.
As the name suggests, Origins will explore the back-stories of several iconic characters from the Magic multi-verse, making the lore more accessible. This reshuffle will also affect the trading card game, Wizards announcing that a web comic series is also in the works.
This is effectively a re-brand for Magic: The Gathering and one that is likely to bring a new crowd into the fold. Origins’ free-to-play model means that the game will organically expand post-launch without the need for players to buy annual instalment year in, year out. In other words, the video game will start to follow the same model as its card-based counterpart.
The game itself will be similar to Duels of the Planeswalkers with straight-up duels as well as some interesting variants such as the Two-Headed Giant battles. Origins will also feature an improved deck builder and community challenges that update regularly.
Kamokazi-UK
I’ll look forward to this, not so fond of the new game very year thing they had going before.
rSp8
I love the Duels of The Planeswalkers games, and was really disappointed that the last one didn’t come to PS4. This looks like a step in the right direction, rather than a new game every year, but I bet you’ll be able to spend some seriously large amounts of cash on it.