Do you have any evidence any of this is the case for WotC?
Or is it speculation?
I have evidence it's all true in general for China, and I have evidence Hasbro prints a metric crapload more than Paizo from China. But more importantly, I am not the one that made the claim about a deadline, you are. The guy making the claim is the one that needs evidence to back up his claim. All I did was ask if you were speculating or not, and you claimed it was not but now appear to be backtracking and admitting it was speculation.
You want me to find a quote in 2 and a half hours of something, to support your claim? How about you do that.
WotC is not Hasbro. They are owned by Hasbro, but they operate separately.
For factory ownership, ship use, and printing bulk jobs? Balooney. Of course they don't. Those are the exact things you merge companies for to begin with! Getting savings on bulk production, with no cross-over in management, is exactly what big companies do. It's one of the reasons they are big companies!
That aside, Hasbro is also a toy company, they don't do a lot of books.
Those toys come with packaging, which is printed. Just about every single thing Hasbro sells, regardless of department, prints stuff. You really think they have no interests in printing factories in China? Heck I know companies 1/10th the size of Hasbro that have interests in factories in China.
Even if they own a printer to publish little instruction manuals, they likely cannot handle full colour hardcover books.
The packages they print for many toys are full color. And, there is very little difference in terms of factories. If they are a print shop, they generally do all printing.
Quite possibly. But in the absence of any other information, it is useful.
But I do have more information, as Mike Mearls himself said that it takes up to four months to get books printed and into stores. And GenCon is four months away. So my speculation still seems to work.
I would like to watch that again, but yeah that's "retail stores" not "GenCon". Nor is it Amazon and Barnes and Noble even (which get their books separate from brick and mortar shops in one bulk shipping direct from the warehouse).
Again, Mearls himself says it takes four months. Which I'm pretty sure I've mentioned to you before, and provided you with a link to the podcast interview.
Again, I would like to watch that so a link would be great, but regardless that's to retail brick and mortar stores.
If you have some actual counter information to offer, I'd like to hear it.
What's your theory or thoughts? Do you think WotC has been silent on release dates, pricing, and the like for fun?
I think they are holding PR for 1-2 months prior to release, because that's when they get the biggest bang for their buck. It's what most normal companies do. It's what Hasbro in general does. It's what several other people in this thread are guessing as well.