Angry Birds Go! out worldwide today, promises you an empty wallet this Christmas

Rovio Entertainment released its first major free-to-play Angry Birds title today in app stores worldwide and Angry Birds Go! promises quite the financial nightmare for your pocket.

But why? Angry Birds Go! is free, right? It is free, but it is also integrated with Hasbro’s Telepods digital gaming platform, which allows players to beam physical figurines into their digital games via their device’s camera. In other words, Angry Birds Go! will work exactly the same way the Skylanders and Disney Infinity games do, with physical figurines teleported into players’ television screens as digital characters. The Telepods platform was first introduced with Angry Birds Star Wars II earlier this year, but nothing encourages you to spend more like the festive season.

If you’re wondering, Angry Birds Go! is a bit of a deviation from the standard Angry Birds game, in that it’s a 3D racing game like Mario Kart. Players can select familiar characters like Red, Chuck, Stella and King Pig and race through a variety of tracks and with over 50 different soapbox karts.

But, you know, Angry Birds Go! is a free-to-play game, and Jami Laes, Executive Vice President of Games at Rovio Entertainment said that while Rovio does “offer some really awesome premium content for fans who want a bit more, [they’ve] designed the game so that you don’t have to pay to have a great time.”

Rovio does have partnerships with certain brands that give players free power-ups and exclusive karts, thereby negating the need to spend on figures for the Telepod. But really, what’s the point of giving us figurines if you don’t want us to buy them?

We’re checking on the availability of the Telepods figurines from Asian retailers and will update on that as soon as we can.

Angry Birds Go! is out for iOS, Android, Windows Phone 8 and Blackberry 10.