transcript july 21, 2008 hsbro earnings conference call and business overview

Glyfair · Jul 29, 2008

Kzach said:
Hasbro has a partnership with EA and yet they've got a bunch of amateurs working on Gleemax and DDI?

Seriously, wtf?.

joethelawyer said:
even more interesting, i have access to about 20 of these quarterly meeting transcripts going back to 2002. there is not a single mention of dungeons and dragons or anything related to dnd in any of them. i guess that shows us how dnd is viewed. 3.5 didnt even get a mention in the year it came out, according to the transcripts i have access to.

I think this answers the original point. D&D is barely on Hasbro's radar (regardless that some think Hasbro is constantly meddling in the brand). It's certainly well below EA's radar.

RabidBob · Jul 29, 2008

Hussar said:
I imagine that DDI is just too small for EA to even want to touch.

That's not a bad thing looking at EA's online efforts. I was a big Battlefield 2 player a couple of years back and EA's management and delivery of the brand was nothing short of incompetent.

Glyfair said:
I think this answers the original point. D&D is barely on Hasbro's radar (regardless that some think Hasbro is constantly meddling in the brand). It's certainly well below EA's radar.

Here, I'm not so sure. D&D, regardless of "nicheness" has a huge brand recognition. Imagine what Blizzard's development team could do with the property given the chance. Granted Blizzard isn't interested in anything aside from their own IP, but just imagine. Neverwinter Nights did very well, the Aurora toolset being quite amazing and the package bought a lot of people who'd otherwise not play D&D into the brand. People built persistent worlds with it and did some quite amazing things. D&D in an electronic format has massive potential and NWN has been the closest thing so far to realising that potential. I suppose it's just fortunate that EA is generally focused on the hugely profitable sports sim market to invest time and money into screwing up a D&D franchise.

Glyfair · Jul 29, 2008

RabidBob said:
Here, I'm not so sure. D&D, regardless of "nicheness" has a huge brand recognition.

Which is why I said barely. Remember, Hasbro got back the electronics rights to many of their core games (Monopoly, etc.) by giving the company longer exclusive rights to interactive D&D games a few years ago to Atari 10 years, see here)

SavageRobby · Jul 29, 2008

Interesting reads. Thanks for posting them.

The Little Raven · Jul 29, 2008

Kzach said:
I hope someone puts 2 + 2 together and comes up with 4 = EA. Maybe then DDI won't completely suck.

Electronic Arts has come to embody the concept of putting out iterative game franchises merely for the sake of a sure-thing product to sell each year, rather than focusing on actual quality or innovation. There's a reason that Mythic EA changed their name back to Mythic Entertainment, and it's got a whole lot to do with EA's reputation. Believing that they would have a positive impact on an electronic product outside their realm of "expertise" is a bit naive, given their history on products within that realm.

Dedekind · Jul 29, 2008

All their annual reports never really reported much on anything other than WotC as a whole.

I did a back of the envelope calculation once and I put D&D as contributing about $30 million in sales in 2007 (give or take about $5 million). When I looked at the year 3E came out, I got about $40 million. These are purely guesses, but with Hasbro's total annual sales of $4 billion, D&D represents less than 1% of the company revenue and WotC is less than 5%.

Son_of_Thunder · Jul 29, 2008

Dedekind said:
All their annual reports never really reported much on anything other than WotC as a whole.

I did a back of the envelope calculation once and I put D&D as contributing about $30 million in sales in 2007 (give or take about $5 million). When I looked at the year 3E came out, I got about $40 million. These are purely guesses, but with Hasbro's total annual sales of $4 billion, D&D represents less than 1% of the company revenue and WotC is less than 5%.

So I wonder if Hasbro believes the RoI is worth it.

Inferno! · Jul 29, 2008

joethelawyer said:
i guess in the eyes of hasbro DnD (to quote an old high school teacher) is just a pee hole in the snow.

Nicely put :lol:

Remathilis · Jul 29, 2008

Keep in mind Magic: The Gathering (which still is a top seller) didn't warrant a mention either.

Fine by me; less Hasbro people mucking with D&D and M:TG, the better.