If Hasbro Pulls the Plug....

[El Mahdi]

The Escapist article describes Hasbro 'marginalizing' properties that generate less than 50-100 million dollars...

I think it's important to remember that "the property" also includes computer games and other things licensed to hold the D&D name...

Unfortunately for D&D, that's not the case.

...Sometime around 2005ish, Hasbro made an internal decision to divide its businesses into two categories. Core brands, which had more than $50 million in annual sales, and had a growth path towards $100 million annual sales, and Non-Core brands, which didn't.

Under Goldner, the Core Brands would be the tentpoles of the company. They would be exploited across a range of media with an eye towards major motion pictures, following the path Transformers had blazed. Goldner saw what happened to Marvel when they re-oriented their company from a publisher of comic books to a brand building factory (their market capitalization increased by something like 2 billion dollars). He wanted to replicate that at Hasbro.


Core Brands would get the financing they requested for development of their businesses (within reason). Non-Core brands would not. They would be allowed to rise & fall with the overall toy market on their own merits without a lot of marketing or development support. In fact, many Non-Core brands would simply be mothballed - allowed to go dormant for some number of years until the company was ready to take them down off the shelf and try to revive them for a new generation of kids.


At the point of the original Hasbro/Wizards merger a fateful decision was made that laid the groundwork for what happened once Greg took over. Instead of focusing Hasbro on the idea that Wizards of the Coast was a single brand, each of the lines of business in Wizards got broken out and reported to Hasbro as a separate entity. This was driven in large part by the fact that the acquisition agreement specified a substantial post-acquisition purchase price adjustment for Wizards' shareholders on the basis of the sales of non-Magic CCGs (i.e. Pokemon).


This came back to haunt Wizards when Hasbro's new Core/Non-Core strategy came into focus. Instead of being able to say "We're a $100+ million brand, keep funding us as we desire", each of the business units inside Wizards had to make that case separately. So the first thing that happened was the contraction you saw when Wizards dropped new game development and became the "D&D and Magic" company. Magic has no problem hitting the "Core" brand bar, but D&D does. It's really a $25-30 million business, especially since Wizards isn't given credit for the licensing revenue of the D&D computer games...

 

[Desdichado]

Huh. I wonder why not? And does that number include the novel lines, I wonder?

 

[wingsandsword]

Huh. I wonder why not? And does that number include the novel lines, I wonder?

Who knows the intricacies of corporate accounting. It doesn't have to be logical to be the rules.

The idea that every "brand" has to pull in at least $50 million/year to be worth it does explain why WotC dropped support for d20 Modern circa early 2006.

 

[caudor]

I wonder what would happen if D&D pulled in only 49 million? Such a shame

 

[El Mahdi]

Or if they were only short by 80_cents...

Good thing WotC isn't financed by BOA.

 

[Desdichado]

Who knows the intricacies of corporate accounting. It doesn't have to be logical to be the rules.

Accounting is all about logic. It's actually fairly easy to grasp once you see how things are done. I personally find it boring as dirt, but not because it's a mysterious or illogical practice.

This is more a strategic question than an accounting one. I would have considered D&D computer games licensing revenue as clearly associated with the D&D brand, and I'm really curious about the strategy that would separate them.

 

[El Mahdi]

Ryan Dancey is probably the guy to ask. It may even already be in this thread. If not (it is pretty long to wade through) that's the thread to ask him in.

 

[JediSoth]

What will folks do if Hasbro pulls the plug on D&D?

The Escapist article describes Hasbro 'marginalizing' properties that generate less than 50-100 million dollars.

If (and hopefully that is a big IF) D&D has fallen below whatever magic number Hasbro has chosen, what will folks do?

And how would it affect the industry?

What games are in the book trade, aside from Pathfinder, will work as a gateway?

I'm okay, I have Pathfinder, Spycraft, and other games. But....

No edition warring, no comments like 'I'll be dancing in the streets!' - a consideration of the impact that the loss of what has for a long time been the flagship and most common gateway to RPGs.

The Auld Grump

I would be sad, but I have all the books I need from basic D&D (my basic: BECMI/RC), AD&D, AD&D 2E, Pathfinder, and 4E to keep playing forever. Not to mention all the other games I have, so I would just have to step up my own creation of new material.

Someone else in the industry would step in to offer the new gateway game. It might look like the Pathfinder Beginner Box. Or maybe something wonderful we haven't seen yet.

It would be a blow to the industry, but not one that would be insurmountable, I think. Things would probably look bad for a while, though.