WotC D&D Gets A New Division At Hasbro

Hasbro is reorganizing and giving tabletop gaming -- Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: the Gathering -- a higher priority.

According to the Wall Street Journal, WotC's revenue last year was $816 million (a 24% increase on 2019). Brian Goldner, Hasbro's Chief Executive, says WotC is predicted to double revenue from 2019 to 2023.

Hasbro is dividing into three 'units' -- Consumer Products (toys, classic board games); Entertainment (film, TV, licensing); and Wizards & Digital (WotC plus digital licensing).

Hasbro bought WotC in 1999 for about $325M.

WSJ News Exclusive | Dungeons & Dragons Gets a Bigger Role at Hasbro

Toy maker Hasbro is reorganizing to capitalize on a pandemic-fueled boom in old-school tabletop games, creating a separate division around the publisher of Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering.

www.wsj.com

 

[Zardnaar]

SWTOR should have spent some of that money on UI design.

I think everyone wanted KoToR 3 and the turned in a soso MMO.

Heard it got better later and the trailers were amazing but yeah passed the on that one.

 

[Zardnaar]

That's not quite right I'm afraid - you're including marketing budgets in those figures.

GTAV's dev cost was estimated at $137m - dev+marketing was $260m. RDR2 was $80-100m dev.

Destiny was somewhere north of $140m, that's probably the most anyone has ever spent on an actual game. Budget including marketing has been claimed to be north of $500m though that may be inflated (still, it is one of the people in management who claimed it). It was pretty content-light at launch for the insane amount they spent on it.

The only games with reliably-reported development budgets above Destiny are Star Citizen ($300m+ and they still don't actually have a playable game), and SWTOR ($200m but it probably includes marketing).

No-one has any costings on AC:Valhalla yet, but AC:Odyssey was likely $50-80m based on what reliable publications can find out. A couple of non-gaming newspapers claimed $500m but that was some kind of insane misunderstanding. Anyone claiming $100m for Valhalla (let alone earlier games) is likely full of it given the engine was fully developed and it's largely just Odyssey with a ton of new assets (not that that's a bad thing, Odyssey is excellent though I think it would be more excellent without the leveling and random loot), and it didn't take very long to develop (one of the big factors here is actually paying all those devs, year after year).

Very very few AAAs actually crack $100m on dev costs. Once marketing gets factored in, plenty do. CoDMW2 back in the day was like $40-60m dev, but went over $200m when marketing was included (given they were doing stuff like taking every large advertising board in entire train stations in multiple countries as well as TV spots and on the side of buses and so on this isn't surprising - that and FO4 had the most intense advertising blitzes I've ever seen in the UK).

List of most expensive video games to develop - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

But yeah you're also making a valid point because even if developing an AAA "only" costs WotC $50m or whatever, they then need to market it, and that's going to be another several more tens of millions (or more, if they want to go really hard).

Given WotC made $400m+ in PROFIT (not gross or turnover) last year, they can definitely afford all this though, so there's that. But it's a huge investment for sure.

Yeah may have been marketing costs. All that stuff is pseudo science apparently.

WotC us worths but alot of that is MtG not D&D and they don't have the assets to develop games like that anyway (teams, studios etc). There's a relative handful that can do it. I think Ubisoft uses 7 studios on Assassin's Creed. EA, Activision and Rockstar can do games in that scale.

AC Origins and Odyssey looked incredible. They're kinda poster child's for games D&D will never look like at least not any time soon.

DLC content for some of them makes more money than the entire RPG industry combined (before profits). Developing one game is more than the RPG market.

D&D's not a AAA game franchise, wouldn't even rate it as AA or maybe even on par with Paradox Interactive.

 

[Scott Christian]

Huh. It's been totally worth it for the bars in my town. I wonder what the difference is.

Not sure. I know every business is a little microcosm, so it might be business specific. I am sure rent and keeping staff happy is part of the puzzle. But super happy it is working in your town. That is awesome. And, in thought, can't really say this isn't working, it's just the bartenders and staff and manager have a degree of separation from it that borders on not believing it is worth the extra staff compared to what it brings in. Good thing is, it doesn't effect their service - they are spot on and good hosts.

 

[Scott Christian]

The only games with reliably-reported development budgets above Destiny are Star Citizen ($300m+ and they still don't actually have a playable game)

I was waiting for this one to come up. Thank god D&D is not run by Chris Roberts.

 

[Zardnaar]

I was waiting for this one to come up. Thank god D&D is not run by Chris Roberts.

I'm not sure if Star Citizen is.
1. A game.

2. A scam.

3. An example of crowd funding gone mad.

4. All of the above.

 

[Mecheon]

I'm not sure if Star Citizen is.

Oh Star Citizen. The tales I could tell about that one...

Star Citizen is an excuse for people to sell jpgs for several thousand dollars

 

[Zardnaar]

Oh Star Citizen. The tales I could tell about that one...

Star Citizen is an excuse for people to sell jpgs for several thousand dollars

Yeah I've watch some of the videos about it.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I'm not sure if Star Citizen is.
1. A game.

2. A scam.

3. An example of crowd funding gone mad.

4. All of the above.

I'll go with 4, but it's only "a game" in theory, because what they've put together so far doesn't approach "a game". It's also worth noting they've burned through $300m+ already (they have like $384m at least), and achieved far, far, far less than games which have had $40-60m budgets, let alone games with $100m+ budgets. It's insane. They do employ 400+ people, but it still doesn't really explain it. I can only imagine that Chris Roberts is vastly overpaying himself (he's certainly made some insane purchases over the last few years).

 

[Ruin Explorer]

WotC us worths but alot of that is MtG not D&D

Sure, but the massive growth in profitability seems to be D&D-related, because I haven't seen any evidence that MtG is suddenly making vastly more money, and it's not MtG that's having it's "cadence increased".

D&D's not a AAA game franchise, wouldn't even rate it as AA or maybe even on par with Paradox Interactive.

Not sure what this means, but I strongly suspect that at least $100m of the $400m profit (again profit, not gross/turnover) that WotC made is D&D. It might be $200m or more.

Even that $100m would mean D&D was somewhat more profitable (again profit, not gross) than individual AAA franchises like Assassin's Creed.

You seem to be stuck thinking of D&D as it was in the 3E/4E era, when your assertion would have been absolutely correct.

 

[Zardnaar]

Sure, but the massive growth in profitability seems to be D&D-related, because I haven't seen any evidence that MtG is suddenly making vastly more money, and it's not MtG that's having it's "cadence increased".


Not sure what this means, but I strongly suspect that at least $100m of the $400m profit (again profit, not gross/turnover) that WotC made is D&D. It might be $200m or more.

Even that $100m would mean D&D was somewhat more profitable (again profit, not gross) than individual AAA franchises like Assassin's Creed.

You seem to be stuck thinking of D&D as it was in the 3E/4E era, when your assertion would have been absolutely correct.

I don't think the entire rpg industry gets 100 million in revenue let alone profit. Less than 70 million iirc not that long ago.

People here get excited because they bought an obscure game studio.

The big companies own multiple studios and 3-4 of them might work on the same game.

IIRC Ubisoft has 7 of them just for Assassin's Creed.

That's the scale I'm talking about and one can compare directly to D&D's digital offererings. They're minnows in a very large pond is the main point. That's what a AAA game is. They might have a single studio develop the DLC alone and that DLC is the same size as a few full games.

AC Odyssey DLC took me 50 hours for two of them.

Remember that he BG3 trailer how it looked bad?

This a AAA title. 3 years old. Yes the game looks like this.

BG3 could be a big hit, graphics not everything but right here right now that's the standard they're hitting.

Coming up to 4 year old game. Same franchise.


That's what you can do with hundreds of millions of dollars.