WotC Filing: Wizards of the Coast makes up roughly 70% of Hasbro's value

[doctorbadwolf]

It's important to distinguish between popularity and profitability, too. D&D has always struggled with finding a sustainable business model; the game by its nature doesn't require a lot of ongoing investment by players. Meanwhile, Magic is brilliantly engineered to suck money out of wallets (he said, refreshing to see if there were any more New Capenna spoilers up). So at the same level of popularity, M:tG will be far more profitable.

By this point, I would not be at all surprised to learn that D&D had become significantly more popular than Magic, even though Magic likely continues to bring in more money. Hence all the spinoffs and licensing--Wizards is looking for ways to tap the power of that market.

D&D merch is, IME, much more ubiquitous, however.

But even ignoring that, D&D books have been selling much much more in 5e than ever before. It is very unlikely, IMO, that the ratio betweeen the two brands is the same as it ever was.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

The Kevin Smith version was good. It was just too adult for the kids, and too modern for the more conservative grognards. Which is why it would be a mistake for WotC to target an adult audience with it's D&D cartoon.

Agreed but I think it tried to cram too much into one season. It tried to cram in themes that She Ra developed over multiple seasons in to a single season.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

The Kevin Smith version was about Teela, and He-Man was out for a too long time. It sounded too forced.

The She-ra show was really focused about to tell a good story, to keep the interest, and creating characters audence could identify. This time females weren't with the body proportion of Barbie. The show was inclusive but not too forced compared with the current standard.

Now maybe Hasbro should save money for some future opportunity for a possible new acquisition. I suspect 2022 will be a busy year in the entertaiment industry.

I wonder why Hasbro hasn't started to sell (cheap) collectable miniatures of D&D monsters, if Gormiti and Superthings worked.

There is a planned strategy. Ravenloft was published for the young adult market, and Witchlight like a first step for a family-friendly line.

Maybe G.I.Joe could appear in more videogames, not only Fortnite, Brawlhala or World of Tanks, for example Snake Eyes and Stormshadow in Injustice 3, Street Fighters 6 or the next Call of Duty.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Are you aware that corporations have a fiduciary duty to maximize the money the investors make? If they fail in that duty, they can be sued.

There is also a thing called a business judgment rule, which means that if investors take the board to court to say that instead of doing A, the board should be doing B, the court will throw up its hands and say “damned if I know” and punt the whole thing back to the board.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The Kevin Smith version was about Teela, and He-Man was out for a too long time. It sounded too forced.

Teela was always a more interesting character.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Teela was always a more interesting character.

The Teela arc was fine but the rest were undercooked.

 

[Parmandur]

The Kevin Smith version was good. It was just too adult for the kids, and too modern for the more conservative grognards. Which is why it would be a mistake for WotC to target an adult audience with it's D&D cartoon.

Bingo.

 

[Parmandur]

D&D merch is, IME, much more ubiquitous, however.

But even ignoring that, D&D books have been selling much much more in 5e than ever before. It is very unlikely, IMO, that the ratio betweeen the two brands is the same as it ever was.

Magic Arena was put on phones, and WotC revenue doubled immediately. Now, "post hoc, ergo hoc" is a fallacy, correlation is not causation, etc... but WotC has credited Arena with the jump in revenue.

The impressive thing isn't that D&D has achieved parity, it's that such a cheap hobby is keeping up the ratio with the financial Juggernaut that is Magic. Which, yeah, is partly great cultural cache: Magic is all about the game narrowly understood, D&D is more expansive by it's nature.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

The fun fact is if a game looks for older audence but it is not too violent or mature, the younger players will be interested because they like to do "things of older people". I remember a meme about Pokemon created for children but played by adults, and Call of Duty created for adults but played by children.

There are rumors about the return of the old Warhammer Fantasy, and I guess because thanks Warhammer: Total War videogame the franchises has recovered the potential value and interest. With the right team WotC could create a strategy videogame based in "Birthright" setting, and this is right for fantasy romance novels for teen girls who don't need to know the rest of the lore. Strixhaven also is perfect for a fantasy teen drama with maho-shojo/magical girls.

But here the metaplot is a limit if the main characters can't alter the world. Then it is better to start from zero with a new setting, but here the flaw would be other characters from potential spin-off shouldn't alter the "sacred timeline" by the events with the original story.

* If a character from the Truespace (Crystal sphere with high-techn and advanced technology) or Kamigawa: Neon Dinasty goes to a standar middle age D&D world... would be it an "isekai"?

---

Magic: the Gathering and Warhammer wargame have the adventages in the market the players would rather to play something by the majority because finding people to play with other titles is harder.

We should think about the money in the market of the d20 Sourcebook not only by WotC by 3PPs. If WotC publishes three or four titles in a year the 3PPs publish dozens or more hundred titles. These players may willing to buy D&D merchandising.

WotC wants to publish more videogames, but after the experience with Dark Aliance should rethink the strategy with online multiplayers.

 

[Bohandas]

Regarding investors and shareholders and the dividends paid to them, I've always viewed shareholders as the economic equivalent of the energy lost to heat and entropy in a mechanical system. Something that takes energy (or in this case, money) out of the system and makes it run less smoothky but which can;t be fully abrogated and must instead be minimized