Hasbro Opens New Wizards of the Coast Video Game Studio in Montreal to Support D&D Franchise

Hasbro has announced a new video game studio in Montreal, with a new focus on supporting D&D video games. The new studio, called Wizards of the Coast Studios Inc. will focus on developing new content for the Dungeons & Dragons franchise and expanding Hasbro's lineup of digital games. The studio is expected to support 200 jobs. Dan Ayoub, the head of the D&D franchise, will also run the new studio. Ayoub, you may recall, has a long pedigree in video game development.

The new studio will not replace Invoke Studios, Hasbro's other studio located in Montreal. The new office for Wizards of the Coast Studios Inc. will be located next to Invoke Studios.

Hasbro has big aspirations for expanding the D&D franchise via video games. Several D&D video games are in development at third party studios and now we're seeing an in-house expansion of the D&D digital portfolio. One obvious speculation is that the new studio will work on a Baldur's Gate 4, which Hasbro has promised will eventually be released following the mammoth success of Baldur's Gate 3.

 

[Zardnaar]

So two studios with several hundred employees and no track record of producing anything?

Wonder if they'll lose more money that TSR adjusted for inflation.

 

[Zardnaar]

I guess most of you don't follow the video game industry. Studios open and close regularly. Today's darling is tomorrows crash and burn. Ayoub, the head of the D&D franchise, has a solid video game background. If anyone is going to make this work for WotC he can. As for 2 studios close together, that's help next door for your project, and expansion work to keep a studio open between major projects. A number of major video game publishers (Zenimax, Ubisoft, Microsoft etc.) have multiple studios under them.

Ubisoft has 7 iirc.

Sometimes one of their studios just does DLC for Assassins Creed

 

[MonsterEnvy]

So two studios with several hundred employees and no track record of producing anything?

Wonder if they'll lose more money that TSR adjusted for inflation.

One is currently working on Exodus which looks cool and has an interesting setting at the very least.

 

[mamba]

here are the credits for Dragon Delves, I don’t know how many jobs could be added for a book like this to justify 200 more people.

more books, not more people working on the same book…

 

[mamba]

So two studios with several hundred employees and no track record of producing anything?

Wonder if they'll lose more money that TSR adjusted for inflation.

Sigil might have done that already…

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

We shouldn't forget a bigger team of scriptwritters could do a better work in the worldbuilding.

 

[Scribe]

Right. Put those 200 people on D&D books. If the 10 million active players line has any truth to it, making a profit should be easy.

It's an interesting thought experiment at any rate.

 

[Horwath]

 

[Incenjucar]

If you were from there, you would know that they are more likely to get bogged down in ensuring the working language was French and all the signs are in the right language. Considering that they are targeting a mostly English speaking market, it actually is a negative. The weather really sucks, so at least more time inside coding, so that is a plus.

I am going to assume they are at least moderately compotent. Multilingual support is generally only difficult if bad faith is involved, or if someone just really cannot use the internet.

English being secondary is hardly an issue. Much of the world knows English, including most of Quebec. BG3 was developed out of a Belgian studio. CD Project Red (Witcher, Cyberpunk) is Polish. Owlcat (Pathfinder CRPGs) is in Cyprus.

Weather is a personal thing; I've only experienced Montreal's summer weather but Quebec City's snowy wonderland was rather lovely to me even if I really needed to have brought snow pants.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

No, Wizards does not need to produce more boiks. I suspect they are already producing all the books the market can bear.
I alredy can neither afford, nor read all the books being produced. More books would nor increase sales to me. It would likely reduce them because I would pay less attention to any specific release.