Overview
- Preorders open January 9 for three LEGO Star Wars Smart Play sets—Darth Vader’s TIE Fighter (473 pieces, about $70), Luke’s Red Five X‑Wing (584 pieces, about $90), and Throne Room Duel & A‑Wing (962 pieces, about $160)—with retail availability on March 1, including travel retail in the US, Australia, UK, France and Germany.
- At the core is a 2x4 Smart Brick with a custom ASIC smaller than a stud, accelerometers, light and sound sensors, an LED array, a miniature speaker with an onboard synthesizer, and wireless charging, communicating via LEGO’s encrypted Bluetooth-based BrickNet protocol.
- Smart Tags carry unique IDs and a Neighbor Position Measurement system detects proximity and orientation so the Smart Brick changes behavior in response to nearby tags and Smart Minifigures.
- CES demos showed interactive storytelling such as vehicles emitting contextual sounds, lightsaber battles with reactive audio, ship damage and repair cues, and characters triggering location- and action-specific responses.
- Coverage highlights both excitement over new play possibilities and concerns about effects on open-ended creativity, pricing and security, with LEGO emphasizing offline operation, no cameras, a non-recording microphone, and no embedded AI.