LEGO Universe launch date confirmed

 

  • LEGO Universe launch date confirmed

    Posted by Huw, 21 Jun 2010 17:25. Filed under Software/Games.

    The official launch date for LEGO Universe is now confirmed as being October 26th. That's the date when the packaged product will be on the shelves of normal retailers.

    However, if you've pre-ordered, you'll be able to access the game from October 12th.

    Although this will not be something I'll get time to play, I really hope it's a success for LEGO: Since it was first announced, what, some 4 years ago, they have put an incredible amount of time, effort, and of course money, into the game.

    Here are direct links to pre-order it at LEGOshop.com: UK (£29.99) | US ($39.99)


    45 comments, latest one posted 36 months ago. (Commenting has ended on this article)
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Comments

Posted by AZFIREWOLF in United States, 21 Jun 2010 17:35

I for one am looking forward to this coming out. I am a beta tester and the game play is fantastic.

Posted by Sky-guardian in United States, 21 Jun 2010 17:49

And now there trying to get an incredible amount of money from their users. I think I'll pass on this one.

Posted by bill32399 in United States, 21 Jun 2010 17:55

I am a beta tester too and I think it is a really cool and great game. My son loves to watch it. I am however very disappointed that it will be a pay to play game. For that reason I will not buy it.

Posted by cjg in United States, 21 Jun 2010 18:09

I wish this wasn't going to be so EXPENSIVE! You have to buy the game for $40 and then you to buy a monthly subscription!

Posted by Alemas in Germany, 21 Jun 2010 18:11

http://shop.lego.com/TopSellers/ From 1st to 7th in little over a month. It's goin' down guys... BTW, new news cathegory, I see: "Software/Games news"!

Posted by bricks-and-bits in New Zealand, 21 Jun 2010 18:51

Money hungry lego always trying to get rich if they lowered their prices they would make more business, I hope lego universe flops, only 8 year olds or people with 8 year old brains will play this game but they better have the pocket money to.

Posted by legobob in United States, 21 Jun 2010 19:09

@Sky-guardian and cjg I agree but I may buy but I probably won,t I think lego won,t give guns like the tommy gun or the revolver not good enough and again the idea to save imagination WORST IDEA EVER I mean Lego has been going on about imagination for ever it gets old ya know

Posted by chris_7086 in United States, 21 Jun 2010 19:12

As a beta tester, I thought the game was great. Then I saw the price: $39.99.

Posted by legomaniac in United States, 21 Jun 2010 19:24

Saw the exclusive E3 footage. It is really awesome but I don't see why LEGO would want to do a online game of making creations with LEGO when we got 5-50 pounds of bricks in our room. Unless your in college then theres an exception.
LEGO is just jumping on the MMOG bandwagon while I just jumped on a train on home to save money for physical bricks :)

Posted by AZFIREWOLF in United States, 21 Jun 2010 19:34

I think we will see a point where you will be able to order your buildings that you build in the game so that you can have them in real life. Phase out the design by me on lego.com and then move it to the game. The price for the game may seem high, but look at what Lego has spent (I have no idea) on this game. They need to get make their money back. Also this game is going to be much better than having your kid sit and play the Wii or some other game system. You can limit them as to how much time they will be able to play at a given time. Parents will love it and the game will evolve to be bigger and bigger. I for one do understand that the price is a high per month, but maybe they will make it a little bit better as they see how many units they sell and after the money has been recovered. Now when it comes to price for sets, Lego has a done a great job.

I think that the prices are pretty good. There are always sets for different price points.

Posted by martiger in United States, 21 Jun 2010 19:44

$40 for the game YES ,
$90 for the subscription NO

Posted by bricks-and-bits in New Zealand, 21 Jun 2010 19:46

Like I said before if lego lowered their prices they would sell triple fold, dont tell me that a small set will cost you as much as a darn ticket to the movies what can you do with 16 peices I mean lego should lower there price they are making 800 % on their products.

Posted by martiger in United States, 21 Jun 2010 19:59

We can live without lego but lego can't live without us. They will realize it on they next crisis

Posted by Sky-guardian in United States, 21 Jun 2010 20:32

@martiger I totally agree. There's no way i would pay $130 for a year. Why would they mark it up to be so expensive???

Posted by MisterFubar in United States, 21 Jun 2010 20:32

I can't believe the nerve of Lego trying to make a profit. How dare them.

Posted by AZFIREWOLF in United States, 21 Jun 2010 21:04

They are not making 800% on their products. For example say one set costs 99.99. Depending on the license that may or may not be part of the set the cost per product could be say $33. Then calculate how much the company has to pay for labor,taxes, benefits, marketing, and other costs. After everything is done maybe they make $20-$25 (thou I think it is less) per product.

Posted by Lobot7 in United States, 21 Jun 2010 22:05

I first thought it was to come out in 2008 but I ended up waiting two years to long... but I did end up on the Beta List the last version of the beta game I played seemed good but a little to violent.

Posted by krysto2002 in United States, 21 Jun 2010 23:31

@Sky-Guardian: Stop exaggerating, at the highest rate, it's $120/year (if you pay the $10 a month fee) or $90 for a yearly subscription. Plus, after testing it, I'd say it's a pretty good MMO considering this is Lego's first. Besides, it's better for families, given that a single account can host up to 4 individual characters.

Second, why is everyone so angry at Lego attempting to get funding, isn't the basis of capitalism in the first place.

And last, since the subscription covers the continuous updating of LU, it will obviously get bigger. There is a definite plan to release more content, and the game additionally functions as a substitute for MLCad and LDD with a massive parts selection in all available colors that functions similar to LDD.

Posted by martiger in United States, 21 Jun 2010 23:55

I spoke with the guys of 3 of 4 LEGO stores in Chicago. I asked them " how many Universe did you sell ? " answer:
1. Two people ask. 2. One sold. 3. None

Posted by kurttkrueger in United Kingdom, 22 Jun 2010 02:36

Something tells me that not many folk who frequent this site are familiar with the model of MMOs. $9.99 is fairly reasonable as subs go.

As for the game itself, as a huge Lego fan and beta tester for the game, I will not be picking this up and playing it.

Posted by BrickWild in Australia, 22 Jun 2010 03:30

Will this be released in Australia?

Posted by bricks-and-bits in New Zealand, 22 Jun 2010 04:57

http://gizmodo.com/5041136/exclusive-video-how-lego-builds-the-minifigs

Look at this lego can make money and lot of it, I recenly watched a tv program on lego and their machines are operating 24 hours and day 7 days a week, I love lego but lego cannot demand huge prices, I recently brought the small space police set with the red caped guy, cost me 13 dollars, in nz that can buy me a bag of chips a large soda and a new release movie all of that brings a whole 2-3 hours of joy, when I buy a lego I build the lego once and leave it on the shelve, I dont play with it as that is what children do, but the whole point is Lego is overpriced by at least 25-40%.

Posted by DrathMaul1997 in United Kingdom, 22 Jun 2010 05:26

Ooh, only 5 days after my birthday! :)

Posted by merkinized75 in United Kingdom, 22 Jun 2010 05:54

Can I play LU beta after the release date? Anyone?

Posted by minifigforlife in United Kingdom, 22 Jun 2010 07:02

krysto, Where did you find out that one account can hold 4 characters? I cannot find that information anywhere?

Posted by Sky-guardian in United States, 22 Jun 2010 11:02

@krysto2002 I'm not. $40 for the cd. $90 for the yearly subscription. =$130
@ bricks-and-bits I agree. Lego is overcharging big time for their plastic products.

Posted by itsaturkey in United States, 22 Jun 2010 11:19

yes lego overprices things. they ARE a company after all. but the point is lego doesn't seem to understand one thing, they will make more money at a cheeper cost. example.
there are 100 people, and the price for Lu is 90$ a year. only 30 of the people pay that. so lego makes 2,700$.
BUT if lego makes it only 50$ (the price for a year of Xbox 360 online) and 70 of the people buy it, whcih is 40 more people then before, they make 3,500. thats 800$ more dollars, and ALOT more people are happy. it would be nice to see somthing like,''pay 100$ this year and get 2 more years FREE." or somthing. Hopfully this year or two legos gonig to inflate prices for LU then once they have made enough money they lower. One things importent, lego's a company, not a charity. they have high prices. but they are a KIDS company which means there products need to be priced at what kids can pay. and in this econmic crisis which is in the U.S. and in the UK (i think) people dont have the money to spend on legos. there are two sides, and there will always be two sides. also, its easy to tell some one what to do when you're not in that profetion.

Posted by Alemas in Germany, 22 Jun 2010 12:30

@martiger: O_O... Told ya, it's goin' down... But probably people are all ordering from the online shop, so that doesn't count... LU has gone up now, up to 6th. But still, I think this'll backfire.

Posted by Smallfryjon in United States, 22 Jun 2010 13:14

I don't think we can make any speculations yet if it's going to fail or not, we're just going to have to wait 'til it comes out. But LEGO has spent a lot of money on making this game - but also again, LEGO's always been more aimed at kids - not people who pay way more then this to play World of Warcraft every year.

Posted by legomatt in United Kingdom, 22 Jun 2010 13:49

I think the key for lego is to expand its customer base, as most lego fans will already be spending what they can afford on kits. LU might do this in the same way that the video games have. I'm an adult, and even I can't afford all the lego kits that i'd like to buy, especially as they seem to get more and more expensive each year, so as much as i would love to have an immersive Lego game to play in such as LU, I would never be able to afford it without giving up entirely on kits. There's always people who can afford everything, but the majority of people have to pick and choose what they spend their money on. I imagine most lego fans are like me, able to buy some but not all of what they want, so this market is unlikely to spend circa £100 on a video game when there are kits that they still want. I imagine children are in an even worse situation, as they would rely on adults permission and pocket money to buy what they want. So LU is best aimed at an adult who wants that 'lego fix' without buying actual kits, and is likely to appeal to the wealthier amongst us, or a new customer base of not-so bothered about kits types. I'd like Lego to do well from this, and hope they could then use the added income to reduce the prices of actual kits... but that won't happen. The biggest fear is that they fall short, and need to recoup losses by hiking prices of kits. I don't see a lot of crossover business from LU, due to its prohibitive initial cost, whereas a PS game was relatively cheap and generated sales of the kits (star wars, batman, etc)... although we all know they dropped a massive clanger with Batman.

Posted by nath8888 in United States, 22 Jun 2010 14:05

Too bad that it's a small fortune per year.

Posted by krysto2002 in United States, 22 Jun 2010 14:47

@minifigforlife, like I said in my previous post, I've been testing the game since Alpha, so I've seen what it has to offer, and so far, I'm impressed.

Posted by xycury in United States, 22 Jun 2010 16:34

By reading the comments, there is only 1 or 2 posters that know what an MMO is/does/and cost.

WoW (World of Warcraft) is 15/mo
Linage (Korean Fantasy) is 12 or 9/mo
Runescape is around 10/mo
Eve Online is something/mo
Guild Wars has ALWAYS been free
---These next ones went free due to poor subscriptions:
Lord of the rings went free
Dungeons and dragons went free

MMO has network cost, server cost, and space cost.

It costs something...and keeps costing them month by month. And simply selling the game for $40 isn't going to cover it. Blizzard has been running with 10 million subscribers, and with the subscription at it's lowest, is $11/mo. That's roughly 110 million dollars a month... I know Blizzard isn't a 10 Billion dollar company... so where do you think that cash goes? Maintenance, salaries, server upkeeps, storage and power. It eats into the monthly subscription fee and that's the only reason it keeps going.

For only 10/mo or if you pay ahead it's roughly 6.xx/mo.

That's about less than say all the sets that's not an impulse or bag set that LEGO sells....

Considering you get to play with every brick imaginable, and currently the Closed Beta offers 4 character slots, one account could handle a family reasonably well.

Posted by krysto2002 in United States, 22 Jun 2010 16:59

For a full year's subscription, it costs about (give or take $0.0001 or so) $7.50 a month. Between the four individual accounts (like save slots in a video game) that comes to $1.875 a month to support a single player, so if you intend on a family account (it IS a family game after all) it would be a smart idea to divide the cost among the players. Also, you may (unconfirmed) be able to run more than one character at a time from separate computers.

So I don't see why everyone is so worked up about it. If you don't want to pay the $40 pre-order, then don't. The only difference is that you don't get the extra 2 weeks pre-release.

But if you throw in your $7.50/month, you can help keep the game running an expanding. The client server the game uses is auto-updating both before and during play.

Posted by Alemas in Germany, 22 Jun 2010 17:25

Oh wow, never seen so many maths done in Brickset comments before O_o...

Posted by bricks-and-bits in New Zealand, 22 Jun 2010 17:45

@ AZFIREWOLF - ha ha design by me is so overpriced I once build a model with about 60 peice they wanted 300 dollars, lego are greedy, and I think that Lego universe is a stupid idea, it will flop. Lego should focus on online play for the lego games on ps3 x-box 360 and wii, not mmo.

Posted by bluemoose in United Kingdom, 22 Jun 2010 17:46

LU is intended to be a very safe game, where parents can have confidence that their children can play in a protected & secure online environment. That will require a lot more moderation than most (all?) other MMOs ... as well as all the automated protection systems, that means lots of people, employed by Lego, to keep a eye on what's going on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 & something weeks a year, year after year. So, as well as the development costs of the game, the servers, the bandwidth costs, the ongoing support costs, the development of additional content, etc., there is likely to be a lot of salary costs. The costs seem reasonable to me, considering what's gone into, and will continue to go into, making LU a exciting on-line gaming environment ... and the hints of what might be coming in the future will make it unlike any other MMO.

Posted by legomatt in United Kingdom, 22 Jun 2010 21:44

I have no problem with the charges for playing mmo's, beyond not being able to afford it myself, d'oh! I expect it will be a great success, and i hope it is too. However, i do have a concern with these kinds of games in general, insofar as games-that-never-end-but-continually-reward-play-with-perpetual-enhancements have a nasty tendency to harm the mental health of their players, achievements become an increasing burden, and if there is any form of competition the more you play, the more you need to keep playing to protect that achievement.
It takes a lot of mental strength to not get sucked into perpetual play games, especially when there's that quandary of each day NOT playing becomes subscription money wasted... this combination is especially damaging.

I'd prefer the charge to be for hours of 'game-time', so that you can take a break without losing your outlay, with 'free time' being available to each user to learn new features. My personal concern is for the mental health of children playing what by design may be an addictive format. It's not the games as such, but the increasing stress those in-game achievements cause when the players fear they may lose something that has taken great effort to obtain. As a game designer myself, with connections with child development practitioners, i am concerned that Lego is marketing such a format which even mature adults do not fully manage.

Posted by HOB594 in United States, 22 Jun 2010 21:46

I know when I was first beta testing what we were able to chat was very limited and we had to demand they loosen it up during beta testing. I know it is a good environment and I can say it is awesome.
I know the game is very fun and exciting however I sadly won't be getting it because I already pay for Xbox Live and don't want to add on another paying game.

I'm playing the beta as much as I can, before it gets turned off on us. lol

Posted by DrathMaul1997 in United Kingdom, 23 Jun 2010 10:19

I would have thought that LEGO would have made it free to play like toontown (Disney's MMO)
They then make there money by saying you couldn't go past lvl 10 until you pay the monthly fee

Posted by xycury in United States, 23 Jun 2010 12:09

@ Legomatt - I agree that the MMO addiction could be bad, but that's where Parents should step up. I thought LU had an option to limit time spent, so that Parents could make sure the child is only getting say a few hours here or there.

@DrathMaul - Yeah TLG could make it free to play for up to "lvl 10" but that would mean that the subscription model didn't work as intended.

I am playing the beta, and there isn't much right now as an adult to get me thrilled with, but I pre-ordered just to see what the end result is and support it.

I don't have kids but I have two nephews that would get a kick out of playing it too.

If LU can connect multiple pcs with one account to "play as a family" then paying that teeny tiny amount is worth all that more...

Posted by J. B. in United States, 23 Jun 2010 12:24

In case LEGO is reading these comments, I just thought I'd add to what many others are saying:
THIRTY NINE NINETY-NINE DOLLARS! :(

Posted by xycury in United States, 23 Jun 2010 15:07

39.99? I dont' think the cost of the game is anything to complain about.

That's far cheaper than some of the largest sets that LEGO makes... It puts it right in line with those "Special Editions" @ TRU/Target/WM.

And you even get a free month to boot !

Posted by itsaturkey in United States, 23 Jun 2010 20:22

im tempted to just buy it (it does have a month free) but then i look at Halo:Reach (yeah its not a kid game, but then Lego isn't an adult product and look at all the AFOL's) and i cant do it. i just wish you didn't have to actualy BUY the CD. really wish it was online and not CD. oh well maybe in a year or two i can afford it.

Posted by DrathMaul1997 in United Kingdom, 24 Jun 2010 09:11

almost all MMOs give you a 'free' month if you buy the box ;)

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