And with the backing of Hasbro, D&D could do it even bigger with computer games, comics, novels, movies and who knows what else?
WotC already did that with Eberron. They even promoted Eberron to the point that their first foray into MMOs was to set it in Eberron.
But did doing that raise the profile of either WotC or Eberron? Nope. In fact, Eberron is still quite a ways down percentage-wise on setting popularity. So the MMO (and the novels and whatnot) did not expand Eberron *or* D&D all that much. So why would you think that a whole new setting that they'd use for all their products would somehow build it up to surpass the Forgotten Realms or the homebrewed settings that a good percentage of the gaming populace create?
I feel like D&D's major enemy right now is the smallness of their designers' and developers' thinking. Plan bigger. Think bigger. Write bigger. Try to return to the fore-front of games in something more than just sales and name recognition.
And what exactly else is there to become "the best of"
besides sales and name recognition? What are they currently NOT that they really SHOULD BE, of which
actually matters whatsoever?
I mean yeah... you could easily say "Dungeons & Dragons is way, way, down the list when it comes to Innovation In Roleplaying." Yep. That's true. Every edition past the very first games did not "innovate" very far past what they already were. There have been many other game systems with truly unique systems that expanded out what RPGs could be.
And that has gotten those companies of those innovative game systems what exactly? Fan support and the ability to continue producing material.
In other words... "sales and name recognition".
To think that there's anything else a game company (of any size) wants besides sales and name cognition (which of course leads to popularity and thus
more sales)... is really kind of silly. They want to keep their lights on, their doors open, interact with their fans, and play games. Which is no different than what WotC does right now. So to think they are taking the wrong approach to gaining what every game company wants because they use the Forgotten Realms to their advantage and don't waste time, energy, and money to "innovate" things by coming up with a whole new setting (which we already saw with Eberron in 3E and the Nentir Vale in 4E not actually accomplishing what you think they were supposed to)... is to have a fantasy idea of what is good for the game and good for them.