In a new report, it is learned that Hasbro is moving away from concentrating on movies and is now going to focus on the digital route, which includes new video games for G.I. Joe and Dungeons Dragons. Hasbro will also be further expanding its popular Magic brand.
Movies not a success
Following the box office disappointments of Transformers One and Dungeons Dragons: Den of Thieves, Hasbro has made the decision to not finance any of its IPs that make it to films. Hasbro recently sold off most of its film and TV businesses.
Hasbro co-financed the films with Paramount. Various studios will continue to make movies based on Hasbro brands, but Hasbro won’t be co-financing them.
Consumer products division expected to fall again
While the report doesn’t mention it, worth a mention is that Hasbro also puts out the merchandise and toys for Marvel and Star Wars, but those don’t seem to have made a dent in Hasbro’s bottom line. Both Marvel and Star Wars have been suffering due to their questionable content.
The report from Bloomberg offers that Hasbro saw big success during the pandemic as everyone was at home buying stuff. However, now that kids are back at school and everything is back to normal, the boom has faded.
Details in the report include sales in the company’s consumer products division (again, Marvel and Star Wars that don’t get mentioned) are expected to fall for the third straight year.
Things are apparently so bad, that the company has had to lay off over 1000 employees and is considering moving its headquarters out of its longtime home in Pawtucket, Rhode Island to Boston.
One to two video games a year
So with consumer products and movie side of things not doing well, Hasbro is going to focus on what it says has been doing well: digital.
Hasbro says its popular Monopoly Go game is going to bring in over $100 million this year. Likewise, Hasbro owns Baldur’s Gate 3 through owning Wizards of the Coast (Dungeons & Dragons) which brought in nearly $100 million in its first six months.
The head of Hasbro adds they want to make more games and are shelling out $100 million to $150 million a year for future projects as they want to release one to two video games a year by 2026.
Those future video game projects include:
- Exodus, from Baldur’s Gate developer BioWare
- A new Dungeons & Dragons video game that hasn’t been previously announced
- An action-adventure game based on GI Joe is currently in pre-production
- Hasbro is testing a video game version of Magic: The Gathering Commander (more below)
Magic will get bigger
Hasbro also owns the TCG, Magic The Gathering, which is huge.
The report says sales nearly doubled to $1.4 billion between 2019 and 2023. Hasbro also has launched an online version (digital) called Magic the Gathering Arena. In addition, Hasbro is expanding the brand with card sets for Lord of the Rings, Marvel, Spider-Man, and others.
In addition to Arena, Hasbro is testing a video game version of Magic: The Gathering Commander which is said to be separate from Arena and will allow for more than two players to compete.
It’s further say that similar to its Marvel Snap game, Hasbro wants to make its digital Magic cards more collectible.
