On June 1st, Hasbro launched their new series of Beyblade toy products. Known as Beyblade X, this release mirrors Japanese company Takara Tomy’s product line of the same name. Alongside this shelf date of June 1st, Hasbro also launched their mobile app accompanying the toy line. We covered their upcoming Beyblade X Transformers crossover just recently.
This overview will be a brief one, but the top-line information that Hasbro has yielded is as follows:
- The new BEYBLADE X app will launch on June 1 on iOS and Android.
- Users can scan theBEYBLADE X and BEYBLADE X TRANSFORMERS Tops to unlock rewards and keep track of their Beyblade Top collection in the “Beylocker.”
- Track your Tops collection in the “Beylocker” and see what other BEYBLADE X Tops you can add to your assembly.
- The new BEYBLADE X app offers a variety of ways to earn digital awards.
- Users can take their BEYBLADE X battles on the go and play against Bladers worldwide.
We at BrittNic Creations had a chance to download the app, sit down, and play with it. Here are our thoughts. We were thrilled with some details, noted below:
- The coolest thing we can say about the Beyblade X app is that it serves as an excellent collection tracker for players who do not have any access to Takara Tomy’s products. That demographic is currently very low due to the release being extremely recent. However, it will increase soon enough and potentially outnumber those who own Takara Tomy’s X-series beys. As it stands, the app is great for those who want to keep track of their beys and theorize over the customization options present within their collection.
- The spectacle of the app is very noticeable from the Beylocker and battles. Even before you get into any of the action, the beys are highly detailed and look fantastic. When you finally get a chance to engage in some battles, the game looks quite clean.
There are, at the same time, a few things that we believe Hasbro could do to polish this release:
- From the outset, the app (on iOS, our only metric at this time) is highly prone to crashing at pivotal times. This is true of right before battles as well as the moments right before fully registering Beyblade X products scanned in via QR code. As such, it makes playing the game a little bit frustrating.
- When playing the game during battles, the excessive need to focus on the UI to ensure the game goes smoothly detracts from the gameplay’s level of visual spectacle. There’s a frenetic sort of focus that is warranted to get matches completed smoothly.
- Beyond this, the way that matches are presented and paused means that even getting one game completed within a match takes a few minutes. With the matches going to seven points and spin finishes being the most prevalent outcome, that makes a match take upwards of 6-8 minutes. And again, that is provided that no app crash occurs.
- From a gameplay preparation perspective, players are given no easy access to a description for bey-core components, an added feature for the app play specifically. All that we really know is that some of these cores can provide a combo attack. However, in my experience a combo attack just means less damage as it uses two or, worse, all of the three cores you charge up at a given time, to provide the same effect as a singular attack. Ultimately, this lack of information seems to not benefit players very much at all.
Granted, many of these issues presented here are probably able to be rectified with developer assistance. If a newer version shores up these problems we will happily note this.
Beyblade X Inventory Issues
The other thing about yesterday that we should address is that the shelf date for a physical Beyblade X release was also June 1st, and yet no stores near us carried any product. They were not at Wal-Mart, Target, or even GameStops in our area. The lack of product a GameStop is notable because we have received reports from patrons of stores of that chain throughout the United States and Canada, all claiming to have seen these stores receive Beyblade X inventory.
It was surprising, and quite disheartening, to see no stock at any of the locations we visited, nor any of the local game stores awaiting distribution. According to those stores’ owners, the distributor is still dealing with an information embargo. This prevents the store owners from even so much as telling us when they’d be stocking the game.
Beyblade X Organized Play
The bright side to Beyblade X’s launch date was that many, many players inquired online about the release. This means there is still a full market for the game in the US and Canada. This market also comes with a need for organized play. Fortunately, I recently joined a league for organized Beyblade X play that fills such a niche. The league is called the Beyblade Battle Association Xtreme, or BBAX for short. The BBAX is the first Beyblade X league specifically geared for players 18 years of age and up, so I fit right into that, which is delightful. Therefore, I am happy to share their Discord server link, found here.
What do you think about the shelf launch of Beyblade X, and of their associated app? Are you excited to see the game flourish in the United States, Canada, and elsewhere? Let us know in the comments below!
