Do you think Paizo would have continued on had WOTC taken Dungeon and Dragon back under their wing?
IMO, the non-renewal of the magazine licenses was the single worst mistake WotC have made since 3.5e was released ahead of schedule.
The immediate consequence of that decision was that the Pathfinder AP product came into existence. Renew the licenses, and that doesn't happen.
But Paizo have also said, on occasion, that they don't really have the manpower to support both PF and 4e. If Paizo still had the magazine license, they'd no doubt be required to have those move to supporting 4e... and that means there would be no room for Pathfinder.
Not renewing those licenses is almost certainly directly responsible for turning D&D's biggest cheerleader into its most dangerous competitor.
Even worse (from WotC's point of view), the market for print magazines is worse than it was when the licenses ended. It's not terribly unlikely that the magazines might well have folded in the interim
anyway - and in that case would probably have taken Paizo with them.
(It is worth noting that even if Paizo had gone to 4e, it's quite possible that someone else would have done a 3.5e successor game - Goodman, or Necromancer/Frog God, or someone. But there's no guarantee that it would still be around; Paizo are pretty exceptional in several ways, so changing the company involved would mean more than just changing the name.)
