After years of successful collaborations with different video game franchises, Sony has struck a deal with Hasbro’s Wizards of the Coast directly, selling their best-known characters directly into Magic the Gathering.
Launching on 27th October, seven direct-to-consumer products will arrive in a limited print run as part of the PlayStation Secret Lair Superdrop. These are:
- Secret Lair x The Last of Us Part I
- Secret Lair x The Last of Us Part II
- Secret Lair x God of War: Greek
- Secret Lair x God of War: Norse
- Secret Lair x Uncharted
- Secret Lair x Horizon: Into the Forbidden West
- Secret Lair x Ghost of Tsushima
Each ‘Secret Lair’ is a set list of usually five or six defined cards, and will feature the characters and lore of the associated franchise. While the full card lists are yet to be announced, you can be sure we will cover each of them as we know more, ahead of each one launching.
The first drop, featuring God of War’s Kratos and his son Atreus, goes on sale on October 27th at 5pm UK time (9am Pacific Time).
You need to beware generally sell out within an hour, so if you’re a fan, make sure you sign up for alerts at secretlair.wizards.com.
Hasbro’s best-selling cash cow, MTG — which made a whopping 82% of their operating profits last year — has just come off a record-breaking quarter for profits, thanks to the Square Enix collaboration, at 95%.
‘Universes Beyond’, the subsection of Magic with direct tie-ins to real-world franchises, has been crucial to Hasbro’s bottom line, featuring the likes of Doctor Who, Cloud Strife and SpongeBob Squarepants (rather than original characters like ‘Magic’s Pikachu’ Loot, or his carers Jace and Vraska), widening the appeal of the game to new fandoms.
The summer’s MTG x Final Fantasy release was an unprecedented success, with its employees noting that they simply couldn’t print the product fast enough. This lead to the scenes earlier this year where Collector Booster boxes were selling for $1k apiece.
The PlayStation Secret Lair Superdrop is significantly smaller in scale than MTG x Final Fantasy was, which contained several hundred unique cards. Instead, this is seven sets of defined cards, which will sell for a significantly lower price — $39.99 for the regular versions or $49.99 for the foil (shiny) versions (or the equivalent amount in your local currency).
And unlike MTG x Final Fantasy, which could be bought from your local Waterstones, these Secret Lair drops can only be bought from WotC directly, as part of a very limited print run… before hitting the secondary market at a massively inflated price.
While the more recent Spider-Man collaboration with Disney’s Marvel has yet to appear in financial reports, community sentiment seems to be that it has not sold as well. Indeed, resale prices for individual cards are, on the whole, significantly lower than their Final Fantasy counterparts.
We will bring you more information on each of these secret lairs, and whether the cards within them are any good, as soon as we know more.
Source: PlayStation Blog
