Or maybe in typical hasbro fashion they were forward thinking in coming up with ways to inconvenience their customers to boost profit. My guess is they strategically decided to require a new force link every year or two.

So we’ll be getting repacks of the current force link figures with new chips… greeeeeeaat…

Right, the chips are in the figure, but all the chip does is send a signal to the reader with what pre-programmed sounds to play. This means that the reader/bracelet is only programmed with x number of figures. Once they start making figures past what is pre-programmed in reader 1.0, they will need to create a new reader that has new sounds pre-programmed, thus 2.0.

If they were forward thinking, they would have had a USB port on the reader, that would allow you to update it for new figures. Instead, they will make us buy a new reader with new pre-programmed sounds an phases. I fully expect the new one will be backward compatible with 1.0, however, the 1.0 reader will not be able to work with the new figures (2.0).

Since the phases and sounds are in the chip embedded in the figure, I’d say no. It’s the chip that will improve – the reader/bracelet will be the same.