You're missing what's being said. It's not that D&D made more money (it did, but, that's not what's being said). It's that Hasbro's profits are up and Hasbro names D&D as one of the reasons for that. In the past fifteen years, while Hasbro has certainly had growth years in profit, not once did it mention that any if it's profit growth was due to D&D, regardless of how much dollar profit or growth D&D has had.
IOW, not only did D&D's profits go up (which isn't really all that hard considering they hadn't sold a book in two years), it went up enough overall to show up on Hasbro's profit sheet. That's pretty darn successful.
That's still speculative. This quoted fragment of the report is *only* comparing higher versus lower net revenues for Hasbro owned game lines. We simply do NOT know why any individual brand was singled out for mention.
It could be the total money that brand is making, yes. But it could be any brand that made a certain percentage more/less money than a standard deviation (brand X is making +/- 10% than the previous year). Or there could be brands that pass a certain minimum threshold (brand X is making +/- >$100,0000 more than the previous year). We also don't know how far back changes in revenue are considered.
It's a single data point, and we don't know why D&D was chosen.
Yes, it could be because 5e made a crapload of money. Or it could just as easily be because its net revenues were a significant percentage higher than the same period last year.
However..
Upon re-reading, I misread the report.
Editing for emphasis: "In the quarter, higher net revenues from SOME products
were only partially offset by lower net revenues from other games brands. In the first nine months of 2014, higher net revenues from SOME products were
more than offset by lower net revenues from other games brands."
The phrase "more than offset by is troubling. I first read it as "more than offset", as in the profit increase of MONOPOLY, MAGIC: THE GATHERING, SIMON, DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS, ELEFUN & FRIENDS and OPERATION made up for the slower increase (or even decrease) of BOP IT!, DUEL MASTERS, JENGA and TWISTER. But it doesn't say that. It says "more than offset by". In that the higher revenues for the first group of games were not enough to make up for the lower revenues of the underperforming lines.
So in the Quarter D&D 5e was released, the extra money allowed the brands to offset reduced revenues for underperforming lines. But the total money/percentage made was not enough to make a meaningful difference in the finances of more than one quarter.
Now, if nothing else was released over that same period, we could claim that D&D alone boosted the quarter. However, MtG released it's 2015 Core set and the Khans of Tarkir expansion set in Q3 as well. So it could be D&D did okay but MtG did gangbusters and boosted the quarter. Or both.
What we do know, is that D&D did not rate a mention in the Q3 quarterly report while Magic did:
http://icv2.com/articles/comics/view/29983/magic-up-double-digits-q3
http://seekingalpha.com/article/257...-2014-results-earnings-call-transcript?page=1
That would be where Hasbro would have named D&D was one of the reasons its games department's profits were up. But they didn't.