Looks like we’re in for another wacky Wednesday of game releases as games randomly appear for sale both specifically in New Zealand and worldwide with seemingly no consistency as to why. Well, moments ago Magic Duels (Free) went live worldwide. You may remember it from our E3 coverage when the game sported the “Origins" suffix which seems to have been dropped in its final release. Either way, it’s very much Magic the Gathering that’s been given a Hearthstone (Free) spin in that now it’s totally free to play and card packs are earned through a similarly generous in-game economy of earning and spending coins.
More interesting than that though, as mentioned in our E3 coverage, moving forward all future card set releases are going to be funneled through Magic Duels which is going to give the game way more staying power than the previous Duels of the Planeswalkers games which often got a little boring once you unlocked everything. I’m also super curious what this means for the future of Magic Online, as the universal rule of mobile free to play popularity basically dictates that in the not too distant future more people will be playing Magic Duels on a daily basis than have ever played Magic Online. Wizards has held fast on the idea that they’re just going to be two different product lines, but, we’ll see.
Anyway, much like Hearthstone, Magic Duels is quite large and will take up just under 1GB of storage on your device. Keep an eye on our Mobcrush channel as I’m going to be streaming some Magic Duels as soon as I finish compiling the rest of the “Coming Tonight" post. Also, we’ve got a thread in our forums that’s currently exploding.