Turbine, the development studio responsible for classic MMO’s like Asheron’s Call and The Lord of the Rings Online, revealed today that their next game will be Infinite Crisis, a DoTA-style competitive strategy game starring the super heroes and villains of the DC Universe.
The game will feature all the key members of the Justice League, such as Batman, Superman, The Flash, and The Green Lantern, as well as alternate versions of each character from different parts of the DC “multiverse,” such as Gotham by Gaslight’s Victorian interpretation of Batman. It’s currently unknown if the game’s story is a direct adaptation of the original comic story arc of the same name, or if it will feature a brand new narrative.
Like League of Legends before it, Infinite Crisis will be free-to-play and will be supported by microtransactions. The game is set to launch on Windows PCs sometime later this year, and Turbine is currently accepting applications for the game’s closed beta on their website.
With Lord of the Rings Online, Turbine proved that they could successfully adapt a licensed property into an online game with some staying power, but the MOBA genre is about to become real crowded, real soon — Valve’s still working on DoTA2, Blizzard’s getting ready to release Blizzard All-Stars, and of course, League of Legends is still as popular as ever. It’ll be interesting to see if the DC Universe license is enough to give Turbine’s game an edge against their bigger or more established competition.