Youtooz has released their promotional photos of their upcoming Skylanders Chop Chop and Drobot plushies. Previously the plushies had incorrect features that the original designs didn't have, like Chop Chop's helmet angled backwards and Drobot's snout pushed in. Fans were quick to point them out and Youtooz made the decision to delay the Drobot and Chop Chop plushies until their designs are fixed.
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| Old version |
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| Revised version |
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| Old version |
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| Revised version |
Kinda Funny Games did an interview with Toys For Bob's Lou Studdert and Paul Yan on Spyro: A Realm Beyond.
Vision for Spyro
- The new Spyro is the team's dream project.
- The character is based on the original trilogy: tone, personality, and voice; not a reboot like Legend of Spyro.
- The game is an evolution of the franchise, exploring new locations and expanding the narrative.
- Every Spyro game should have charm, memorable characters, fluid movement, and exploration.
- Gems remain a very important part of the experience.
- They are leaning heavily into the fantasy of being a dragon.
Exploration & Flight
- Players can explore both on the ground and in the air—the choice is theirs.
- Dragon flight is a core addition to Spyro's movement kit.
- Flight was the cornerstone of the project from the beginning, with the world designed around it.
- Flying builds upon the fluid controls and animations from Spyro Reignited Trilogy and adds new ways to explore rather than replacing ground movement.
- Levels feature significantly more verticality and layered environments to support flight.
- The goal is for players to see distant locations and think, "How do I get there?" by combining abilities and environmental interactions.
- They don't want the game to feel like a flight simulator.
Flight mechanics
- Flight is fully active rather than automatic.
- Players must flap Spyro's wings to maintain speed and momentum.
- Diving increases speed.
- Flame breath can ignite campfires to create lift.
- Sky rings provide speed boosts.
- The challenge comes from chaining these mechanics together to stay airborne.
- Spyro's flame breath has greater range while flying, functioning more like fireballs, whereas on the ground it behaves more like a flamethrower.
Design Philosophy
- Spyro is about zen-like, fluid movement through beautiful worlds.
- This is fundamentally different from Crash's precision platforming.
- The studio loves creating colorful characters with exceptional controls.
- There were few games to draw inspiration from for this type of flight system, so much of it required pioneering new ideas.
Why It's Not "Spyro 4"
- Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time continued the original trilogy directly because later entries had drifted away from the original gameplay.
- Spyro is intentionally not numbered to make it welcoming for newcomers.
- It contains references for longtime fans but is designed as a fresh experience anyone can start with.
Relationship to Skylanders
- Nothing carries over from Skylanders besides lessons the team learned about humor.
- The two series exist in completely separate universes.
Development
- Development has been underway for a little over two years.
- The team feels confident about a Spring 2027 release.
- Their preferred development cycle is around 2–3 years.
- They describe themselves as a nimble, efficient studio with strong scope management.
- There were moments where the project became over-scoped, requiring difficult cuts to stay on budget and schedule.
Toys for Bob & Independence
- The team originally wanted to work on Spyro but was assigned to Crash Bandicoot 4.
- They later pitched a new Spyro game to Xbox alongside their proposal to become an independent studio.
- Transitioning to independence was smooth, although establishing the new company required significant work.
- They had a strong relationship with Activision, but the pandemic changed priorities.
- The studio was required to support projects like Warzone and Overwatch 2.
- Toys for Bob eventually split into multiple teams and felt they were moving away from the types of games they loved making.
- After Microsoft's acquisition of Activision, they sought independence to focus on those games again.
- Xbox leadership supported this decision.
- The studio operates fully remotely, having shipped Crash Bandicoot 4, Crash Team Rumble, and their support work on Warzone remotely.
Choosing Spyro
- The team has many original ideas.
- Spyro was chosen because it made the strongest business case, particularly due to its sales history.
- They prefer working with established characters because timeless franchises come with passionate existing audiences.
Crash Team Rumble
- Crash Team Rumble was not created because of the live-service trend.
- The concept was prototyped before Crash Bandicoot 4.
- The goal was to make a Crash spinoff that still felt like Crash rather than another racing game.
The Future of 3D Platformers
- They believe 3D platformers are experiencing a resurgence.
- Examples mentioned include Astro Bot and the Rayman remake.
- Spyro and Crash have very different gameplay philosophies, making another crossover game difficult.
- The team are huge fans of Banjo-Kazooie and would love to work on the series if given the opportunity, describing those games as timeless.
In an interview with The Independent, Stewart Copeland confirms that he is not working on Spyro: A Realm Beyond.
“It happens that way,” he said, “It's a new generation. They want a new generation of sound and everything… they’ve got to modernise it. No harm, no foul.”
However the news sparked backlash with the Spyro fanbase who are big fans of Stewart Copeland and were hoping he would return to compose the soundtrack for A Realm Beyond. Some believe with Stewart not composing for the game, it is doomed to fail, or lost value, with others declaring they won't preorder the game.
Will Toys For Bob respond, or will they ignore the backlash and continue on with their own composer chosen for A Realm Beyond in their push to not cater too much to nostalgia?
A Spyro fan film, Special Delivery, is a project currently in development by Dessert Monkey, who plans to release the movie later in 2026. This is the first I've heard of the fan film, and after watching animation tests, the first few trailers and the latest one, I became interested in this project and reached out to Dessert Monkey.
In the announcement trailer for Spyro: A Realm Beyond, we are given a glimpse of the villain who will be featured in the new game. We could only see his clawed hands, his cloak, horns, and his menacing glowing staff. Fans are currently speculating about the identity of this new antagonist.
Spyro: A Realm Beyond has garnered worldwide positive reception upon its announcement, with fans excited about the return of our heroic purple hero. The official trailer for Beyond has reached over 1 million views more than the "All Scaled Up" reveal trailer for the Spyro Reignited Trilogy.
In an interview with Gamesrader, Toys For Bob CEO, Paul Yan, stated that he's proud of the development team who have been "paying attention and listening to the community."
He sees that A Realm Beyond could have fallen into two extremes:
"If you stick too much to nostalgia, then you basically just rehash, and it's like, 'why did we do that?'" he suggests, saying that rehashing things would mean "there's no future that kind of gets out there."
Meanwhile, "on the other extreme, you innovate too much, and all of a sudden you don't even recognize what the character is and what the series is." With that in mind, Yan says, "that tension is so real" when it came to making A Realm Beyond.
After all, he continues, "our goal is that we want Spyro to live on for a long time. We want not just one new game, but many new games. We hope that this is the first of many. So we're going to have to take some risks. We're going to have to move into new territory, and our goal is to make sure that that evolution is always speaking to something that is authentic and reverential to building on the foundation of what is truly Spyro, and then we'll take some leaps." This will be "uncomfortable," he adds, "but we wanna go there."
Personally I'm okay with getting a new game every couple of years if love and effort is put into them. We don't want Spyro to be in the same situation as the Skylanders franchise: Yearly releases that will gradually milk the franchise to death.
After many many months of speculations, false alarms, bouts of hopes, we are finally shown the next installment in the Spyro the Dragon franchise, a new original game: Spyro: A Realm Beyond.
The Pop Fizz Youtooz plush is now available for preorder until June 30th. But Youtooz has announced they will be delaying preorders for the Drobot and Chop Chop plushies in order to make some edits to them after Skylanders fan feedback regarding the designs for the plushies.
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| Chop Chop Youtooz plush with his helmet angled backwards |
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| Chop Chop's original design with his helmet angled forwards |
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| Drobot Youtooz plush with his snout pushed in |
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| Drobot's original design with a prominent snout |
Youtooz announces their next line of merchandise plushies for the Skylanders franchise: Drobot, Pop Fizz and Chop Chop. Each plush is 9in tall and will cost $29.99. They will be released on June 2nd.
https://youtooz.com/search?q=Skylanders
When the Spyro Reignited Trilogy, fans were disappointed that the baby dragons from the Spyro: Year of the Dragon installment weren't given the same treatment as the adult dragons who were each given individual redesigns for Spyro 1.
Shortly after the release of the Reignited Trilogy, Spyro fan Nicooriia began doing a fan series on her take on the baby dragons from Spyro: Year of the Dragon. The challenge lasted about 3 years, and years later I decided to reach out to Nicooriia to ask some questions about her series.
On Reddit, a user named MomokaRage posted on Twitter that their boyfriend discovered the E3 2000 Spyro 3 promotional statue in an abandoned building in Saint Helens, Oregon. The statue’s eyes are cracked, his purple scales faded over the years and his wings are missing.
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| Spyro 3 E3 2000 statue image provided by Craig Stitt |
In the original Spyro trilogy, the dragon family Spyro belonged to was speculation amongst the fan community as Insomniac Games never added any implications apart from Spyro mostly being found in the Artisans world at the start of each game. He has traits that would fit a Peace Keeper, often itching for a fight, but his home is in the Artisans world where the dragons are peaceful.
In the Spyro Reignited Trilogy, both Toys For Bob and Insomniac Games envision Spyro as an Artisans dragon. In the game's credits, we see artwork by Devon Cady-Lee of Spyro working with various elder Artisan dragons in finding his artistic voice. From building, sculpting, cooking, baking, music composing, clock making and writing. Some of which Spyro takes joy in, or accidentally messes up.
Ripple Junction has released new Spyro merchandise a couple of months ago back in January 2026.
Spyro fan Danizoar recently released a new mod for the PC port of the Spyro Reignited Trilogy where fans can play as a teenage version of Reignited Spyro. This teenage Spyro features lanky body proportions, bigger wingspan and body frame, much like Dawn of the Dragon Spyro. Some of the design features are based on Nicholas Kole's Reignited adult Spyro design from 2018, where Spyro is a balloonist as his profession. The mod also comes with the optional yellow colored spines for classic Spyro fans.
Humorously to me, since adult dragons in the OG/Reignited universe are bipedal, it gives off a vibe of “Spyro, you’re too old now to be running on all fours all the time” if an adult dragons scolds a teenage Spyro. Which reminds me of something while playing through this mod. Due to Teen Spyro being bigger, the game camera that was designed for young, smaller Spyro has it focused on Teen Spyro's body at times, and the teen model itself nearly reaching the top of the screen with players barely seeing his face. Animations aren't correctly retargeted, which makes the mod a little janky.
Danizoar had difficulties working on the mod due to Unreal Engine not agreeing with the inclusion of the teen Spyro model. But it worked out in the end in spite of lingering issues. Overall, it is a nice mod to look into and experience what a teenage Spyro would look like in a original/Reignited-based Spyro game to allow fans to play as an older Spyro.
An existing mod by Danizoar also features original young Spyro wearing a balloonist scarf and gloves.
Spyro fan, redandblack64, has released an update on their fan PlayStation 1 remake of Spyro: Season of Ice. For the Autumn Fairy Home, it replaces the placeholder dragon candles from Bunndragoness' Spyro: Crisis in Chronolia fangame with Season of Ice's trademark collectibles: the frozen fairies. To free these fairies from their icy prisons, simply use Spyro's flame on them and the ice will melt off the fairies, freeing them. Like in the original game, most of the collectible fairies have dialogue upon being freed, but will need to be interacted with in order to see them.
The interactable pumpkins now light up when hit with Spyro's flame. Lighting all pumpkins around the Autumn Fairy Home will give Spyro a frozen fairy that will appear inside one of the castles near Hunter and the forest.
A Spyro fan named Fabrick_89 put together his idea for a LEGO set of Spyro & Sparx on the LEGO Ideas website. The staff members of LEGO have noticed Fabrick's fan project and praised it so much that it was selected as a Staff Pick and featured the Spyro model on the LEGO ideas website.
The LEGO Ideas Team would like to send you virtual high fives and a big congratulations, as your LEGO Ideas project Spyro the Dragon & Sparx has been selected as today's Staff Pick!
Staff Picks are one of the ways that we celebrate fantastic projects that show off something out of the ordinary - as your project has done! It's not 100% about the model itself, but we also reward great pictures and presentation. It doesn't matter if your project has 100 supporters or 5000 supporters, they've all got a chance as long as they can WOW us!
Receiving a Staff Pick today doesn't mean you can't earn another in the future. Time will tell if your other projects could wow us just as much as well.
Being chosen as a Staff Pick is an editorial decision, and has no impact on the LEGO Review if the project reaches 10,000 supporters.
Keep up the good work!
The project has reached over 3k supporters. If enough attention is brought to Fabrick's Spyro creation, it's possible it can convince LEGO to make Spyro related LEGO merchandise.
https://beta.ideas.lego.com/product-ideas/c0f9046b-fc85-4853-99d4-61f9e29d22df
Nintendo released a new patch update for the Nintendo Switch 2 (Version 22.0.0) that includes an optional setting called "Handheld Mode Boost". This will make Switch 1 games think that they are in TV mode even when in portable handheld mode, allowing games to run at higher resolutions in TV mode to utilize the Switch 2's 1080p screen.
For Spyro fans who have the Spyro Reignited Trilogy for the Nintendo Switch, they have noticed an increase in framerate that makes games run the same framerate as certain console ports.
EBGames released a new set of Spyro merchandise, available exclusively in Australia.
https://www.ebgames.com.au/search?q=Spyro
First 4 Figures has announced that they will open preorders tomorrow for their Peace Keepers edition of their Spyro mini-metal Crystal Dragon statue line. The Artisans mini crystal dragon statue was painted green, Magic Crafters' was blue, Dream Weavers' was purple (although it is actually pink) and here we have Peace Keepers crystal dragons being red.
Bunndragoness' Spyro Spaghetti engine has recently included a new fangame called "Spyro: Skybound Heist". This particular fangame features an interesting take on the Balloonists from Spyro 1 who ferried Spyro across the Dragon Realms with their hot air balloons.
The game starts onboard an airship operated by the Balloonists. The captain of the Balloonists orders his crew to go to different worlds to collect strange purple crystals he is obsessively seeking, but the task itself is difficult for them since they aren't built for fighting and adventuring. At their Captain's urging, the Balloonists are prompted to seek Spyro's help, aka grabbing him from the ground with their ship's crane and pulling him aboard their ship. With nowhere else to go at the altitude he's in, Spyro has no choice but to help his Balloonist friends by collecting the purple crystals in other worlds and find out why Balloonist Captain is acting strangely.
The Airship is the game's home world. And like all home worlds, it has its own collectibles, NPCs, and portals to other realms. You can talk to the Balloonists here; many who are from Spyro 1 including Marco and Tuco, and fanmade female ones created for the Skybound Heist. Conversing with the Balloonists tells the player more additional lore to the story and what the Balloonists do in their sparetime before their Captain began acting strange. There are also easter eggs from other Spyro games on the Airship that you can find.
Spyro travels to the available worlds through portals on the airship collected by the Balloonists. Each realm has a set number of crystals, gems and skill points. At the start of each world, we are given an introduction cutscene (based on the ones from Spyro 2) involving two Balloonists trying and failing to navigate through the realm to find the crystals before Spyro takes over the mission. Returning NPCs from Spyro 2 and 3 make an appearance too at the start of each world. One of the playable worlds in the demo is themed around spiders. But for those who have arachnophobia, there is a way to avoid them entirely by pressing a button that kills all the spiders in the level for easy progression.
At the moment, there is no final boss once all current levels are completed since the game is still under development. I am interested to see what else they will add to this game.
Many Spyro fans are unaware that Cynder was playable in some form in the Nintendo DS handheld port of The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning, two years before her playable debut in Dawn of the Dragon. She can be unlocked in the Extras section as a Cheat by completing 60 puzzles found in the game.
As a character skin, Cynder plays the same as Spyro, sharing the same voice clips and elements: the story doesn't change and the characters still refer to Cynder as Spyro. As playable Cynder, you can also fight against evil adult Cynder.
Phil Spencer has announced he is stepping down from his role as Microsoft Gaming CEO after 38 years. His successor will be Asha Sharma, the current President of Microsoft’s CoreAI Product.
Phil Spencer says:
It’s rare in life to know when a chapter is closing, but after 38 years at Microsoft, that moment has arrived for me. I’ve made the decision to retire and begin the next chapter of my life. It’s a milestone that’s given me a chance to reflect on the incredible journey I’ve been fortunate enough to share with so many of you.
I’m excited for [Asha Sharma] as she steps into the CEO role. She’s joining an incredible group of people; teams full of talent, heart, and a deep commitment to the players they serve. Watching her lean in with curiosity and a real desire to strengthen the foundation we've built gives me confidence that our Xbox communities will be well supported in the years ahead.
Thinking back to my start as an intern in 1988, I never could have imagined the path ahead. I’ve been lucky to work with so many passionate creators, partners, colleagues, and players across the industry; people who challenged me, taught me, and made this work full of joy and wonder.
Thank you to everyone who’s been part of this chapter. This community has meant more to me than I can say.
From here, I’ll keep doing what’s always mattered so much to me: cheering on the teams pushing this industry forward and playing alongside this incredible community. I'll see you online.
There are some concerns about the announcement, since Asha Sharma has zero experience in Gaming and she is an executive for AI, a controversial tech in this day and age in the creative business. In a new statement from Asha, she mentions that they have no interest in making AI slop in games made under Microsoft:
Asha Sharma says:
We are witnessing the reinvention of play.To meet the moment, we will invent new business models and new ways to play by leaning into what we already have: iconic teams, characters, and worlds that people love. But we will not treat those worlds as static IP to milk and monetize. We will build a shared platform and tools that empower developers and players to create and share their own stories.
As monetization and AI evolve and influence this future, we will not chase short-term efficiency or flood our ecosystem with soulless AI slop. Games are and always will be art, crafted by humans, and created with the most innovative technology provided by us.
The next 25 years belong to the teams who dare to build something surprising, something no one else is willing to try, and have the patience to see it through. We have done this before, and I am here to help us do it again. I want to return to the renegade spirit that built Xbox in the first place. It will require us to relentlessly question everything, revisit processes, protect what works, and be brave enough to change what does not.
What does this mean for the game IPs under Microsoft and those recently acquired by them, including the Spyro the Dragon franchise? Hopefully something good. In light of the changing of command, there will be no shaky layoffs for Xbox-owned studios. At least that’s something.
