I don't think Hasbro's financial health has much to do with our little niche, but this is interesting news. They are finally recovering from their overinvestment in Episode 1 and according to another news item they are scaling back Ep.2 merchandising by a large amount (also influenced by Lucasfilm's scaling back of licenses for Ep.2).
I'm far from an expert on economics, so if I'm completely off-base here feel free to correct me.
They're basically saying "We're not losing quite as much as we were a year ago", but there seems to be quite a way to go to turn that $17 million current loss into a profit. Presumably some of the strategies thiey mention (plus all the layoffs etc that we know about) are aimed towards accomplishing that goal, but it still seems to be quite a task.
Well losses of the overall company are hardly indicative of divisions as a whole it would be interesting to hear from someone with a proxy statement for this quarter for hasbro as that would likely break down the losses into specific areas so we could perhaps see which areas are struggling the hardest.
Overall though I think that lingering concerns over debt load and industry wide accounting irregularities would indicate that Hasbro could continue losing money for the rest of the year.
Without more detailed information I think it's impossible to say whether or not this will have effects on WotC division. I think that perhaps indications of CCG sales etc would be required to be able to predict further cuts at WotC.
Sorry...anyhow, I don't really think this will affect our little niche, as anothe rposter has said. And i need to stop posting all these "me too!" replies...
Of course, after having read it (which dealt with Wizards situation in more details), I still chuckle at the fact that they are still trying to cash in on the Pokemon fading trend, which still continues to decline in sale.
It's still hard to believe but Wizards of the Coast was a $300 million business last year.