Hasbro selling off one of their IP's? I laughed heartily. That's the only thing Hasbro execs care about with respect to D&D. WotC is a blip on their financial radar, but Hasbro would rather sit on the IP for ten to twenty years and reboot it than to ever sell it off.
They will probably license D&D out to several game publishers at once in an attempt to make bank on a game franchise. No more exclusive licenses. That was a poor decision by an inexperienced company.
The exclusive license to Infogrammes SA was the sweetener to exit a market they did not understand, did not want to be in, and in which they were losing $100,000,000.00+ by participating in it. They HAD to get out and they did. D&D's massive exclusive license (along with Transformers, GI Joe and a few other titles) was the cost of that sale. They paid it (and Peter Adkinson walked from WotC management when they did it over his objection).
So I don't agree with this view. First off. Hasbro has sold IP in the past -- that's what got them into bed with Atari nee Infogrammes in the past. They had a LOT of IP that they sold in that deal (Master of Orion, Master of Magic, Rollercoaster Tycoon, X-Com, etc. The list was a who's who of computer games in the 80s and 90s -- and most of the top strategy games ever made at that time, too.)
Secondly, there is a reason that Hasbro was content to sell those IPs. No only was Hasbro Interactive costing them money, but by selling the IP, they exited the business forever.
Mostly, Hasbro is in the business of making and selling Girls and Boys toys. Toys are always perceived to be competing products, no matter the "toy" in question. So when you sell the rights to a toy line, a few Xmas's later -- you are notionally competing against that product in the marketplace. The same applies to boardgames, too.
Heroscape is a toy/boardgame. That they would not sell. But D&D? Different story.
With D&D (and the rest of their RPG IP), were they to sell it, they would view it as exiting the business. They would not see that IP as coming back to compete against their other Boys toys in some future Xmas to come.
So unlike you, I don't have much doubt that Hasbro would sell that IP for the right price and happily exit the business. Moreoever, if there was a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, after 11 years, WotC reasonably thinks that they would have hit it already. They missed the boat to MMO Moneybagsville and that boat does not appear to be departing again, for anybody. (
SW:TOR might prove to be the exception to this. We'll see.)
As for the IP in the underlying D&D rules, that value has essentially been given away in the OGL before they bought the company, as Paizo has recently proved (much to WotC's chagrin). It is also clear that they don't put a whole
lot of stock in the value of the fictional worlds and characters in the D&D universe, either, in terms of publishing or movies/TV.
What's valuable is the brand name itself and the idea of the game. Given the direction the computer game market is going and the problem of free to play games, revenue models for Triple A computer game franchises are quite difficult to see into the future. That applies to both consoles as well as PC.
So laugh if you want. I believe for the right price, Hasbro WILL sell the entire thing, down to the bare hooks and wires of Metamorphosis Alpha and the proofs of
The Strategic Review. RPGs are not their core business and they've done as much with D&D as they are ever likely to do. If they can make more money selling it then they believe they will make by keeping it -- they'll sell it in a heartbeat because they won't see it as setting up a competitor to compete with their own core business in future years.
