I think you're misreading or at least missing the broad points I was making for some more specific points that I was not. They did slow down the release for 5e. I did not say this was in response to poor numbers. I pointed to it being the result of a smaller design team—and a smaller team would be hard-pressed to develop multiple books simultaneously.
I agree with this part. Originally, the slow release schedule of 5E was making a virtue of necessity. The D&D staff was cut to the bone over the course of 4E, and they simply didn't have enough people to crank out material at the pace of previous editions.
The argument I'm making is that Hasbro will scale D&D back because it is not going to meet its company-wide big IP goal of which brands will be further developed and which would go on the proverbial back-burner. If the D&D team can survive with fewer members, that's what the company will do until they see an opportunity to expand on it. Until then, they seem like they would prefer to spend the resources elsewhere.
This part I don't agree with at all. This is viewing the situation through the lens of the 4E transition, when D&D was a modest product line making a desperate play for "core brand" status so they wouldn't have to lay off most of their staff.
This is no longer the case. D&D is a big moneymaker for Hasbro now -- not on par with Magic, of course, but nothing is on par with Magic. Very few of Hasbro's properties are doing anywhere near as well. They are in no danger of getting mothballed.
If you just look at the D&D business strategy, there
are notable similarities to 4E: A new edition(ish), a big push to go digital and harvest tons of subscription revenue, and an attempt to pull back from the OGL. The reason this looks familiar is that, now as in 2008, Hasbro is trying to massively scale up the profits from D&D, and this is the most obvious way to try to do that.
But the reasons for the attempted scale-up are different. Back then, D&D was an underperformer trying a Hail Mary pass to justify its budget. Now, Hasbro itself is an underperformer, and it's looking to juice its most profitable brands to justify its stock price.
