Sword of Spirit
Legend
I think this means that they will be license more, not less. By funding a project they would hurt themselves if they opened up the license to others, now they can license to anyone and let the best software win. It is a win win, I only wish they had done this from the start. Of course this is just speculation, but Fantasy Grounds did visit with WotC a couple weeks ago right? So perhaps this has been in the cards for at least a few weeks.
I can see this as a possibility, though I don't put it in my "I can see this is coming" category. Cool if it happens though.
...of course, the worst case scenario is still pretty bad, and when it comes to Wotc and electronic products, I'm firmly in the "seeing is believing" camp.
I've been really optimistic about 5e, and generally the products have validated my confidence in the designers. But with regards to electronic products, I'm pretty much in the same camp.
If Hasbro thinks that D&D has some value, it needs to have some professional managers - genuine managers with actual executive experience - running D&D. Sure, "suits" are disparaged but it's clear the gamers need some adult supervision.
Look at Google, although there is a monumental difference in scale. The creative guys realised they needed adult supervision - aka proper management - so Eric Schmidt was brought in. Now Hasbro couldn't afford someone of Eric Schmidt's calibre, but I am sure they can afford to hire at least one professional manager for the D&D team.
Okay, I disagree strongly. One of the reasons we are getting what (IMO) is the best version of D&D so far is because the designers appear to have been given control over the process. They are planning to make a version of the game that will last for a long time, and trying to make every product solid and called for. Instead of just churning out a bunch of material of various levels of quality and then ditching the edition when it gets saturated, they are taking a much slower, more researched release angle. I've seen the results in the PHB and the MM, while I can always criticism some of the results, I completely approve of how and why they are going about it. I went into this trusting the designers because of how they were tackling it, and my trust was rewarded with the product I want.
If the suits were in charge, there is no way it would have been as good, and I might not have even ended up buying/using it.
*I'm not some sort of WotC fanboy. Hate 4e and everything it represents (okay, slight exaggeration--I do like a few things it did) and WotC lost a lot of goodwill in my eyes because of it. I just could tell they had learned from it and weren't using the same design and marketing strategy this time around.