Quote from Cypherpunk2020 >>

.... all leading to stock prices falling and the stocks ratng getting lowered... yeah, I will say it again: SOME people DO need to get fired.

 The Bank of America analysts who lowered their stock rating initially would be a good place to start - they made a lot of comical errors that showed they lacked any actual understanding of WotC.

For starters, they assumed, without looking into anything, that Amazon, Walmart, Target, and other big box stores were how WotC moved most of their product - that simply isn’t true.  The overwhelming majority of Wizards’ sales are through local game stores - 80% or so - so the BoA folks were only looking at about 20% of the market.  Data shows LGSes have actually been doing better over the course of the past couple years, and their purchases of WotC product is increasing.

Of course, 20% is still a large chunk of sales - even if far from as important as the analysts suggested.  So, how did the analysts collect data? A nationwide survey of big box stores to see what WotC purchase orders they’re putting in?

Nope - they walked around to Targets in the immediate vicinity of their New York City office and saw there were not Magic cards on the shelves, and extrapolated that fewer retailers must be wanting to buy Magic cards, and came up with some justifications they thought were true.  What they ignored, Target has actually been pretty transparent as to why some stores are not stocking Magic cards - and it isn’t lack of interest and product not moving.  Target and other retailers have had a massive theft problem with packs of Magic and Pokémon cards as the pandemic made those cards more valuable - and some chose to stop stocking the products because they ended up losing more money to theft than the shelf space was worth.

Now, sure, the most recent downgrade at least has some basis in reality - but the first one was laughably incompetent.  That means the legitimate downgrade started from the incorrect position - the overall rating probably should be lower than it was at the time of the initial BoA report, but not as low as it is today, as today’s rating is tainted by the lazy analytics of the initial downgrade.

Which is all to say, the stock downgrades are not great for Wizards or Hasbro - but they’re far from the end of the world. If one looks at the real data, Wizards is not in a bad position right now, and trying to extrapolate some kind of sale of Wizards from the stock downgrade is rather silly. 

Quote from Backcountry164 >>

Quote from Falwith >>

Fancy dancing and brushing aside the implications of a statement does not, by default, make a statement about ones hope untrue.  You stated you had hopes of a profit plunge and a "fire sale" of the D&D brand as a result.  Now maybe you're not up to speed on how business works, but hoping for a business to suffer large revenue loss means jobs will be lost.  By all means, try to distance yourself from the linked result to your wish, but spare us the high and mighty stand that you don't want people to lose jobs when your hope will result in exactly that.

 

 ??? What exactly is your point?? That failed businesses should be propped up because people will lose thier jobs?? This makes sense to you somehow?? 

I suggest starting at the start and following the thread so your replies make some sort of sense.  My comment was directed to the poster who said he/she/they/it hoped Hasbro would have a big profit drop, sending WotC to the auction block as they try to sell off stuff and make numbers.  Nothing in any of the posts indicate anyone or anything should be "propped up" as you claim.  What I said was hoping for a business to fail financially is hoping for people to lose jobs.  These 2 things are hard coded to one another, so you can't wish a business to fail and hope everyone keeps their job.

I have no idea what axe you want to grind by suggesting a propping up of anything, since you are the first to even hint at such a thing.

Quote from Kotath >>

Quote from Cypherpunk2020 >>

all leading to stock prices falling and the stocks ratng getting lowered... yeah, I will say it again: SOME people DO need to get fired. There is a thing such as accountability in the business world for incometence.

 

 

The stock price has been falling for the last several years, long before any of this, which is actually evidence that their current business model was not, actually, working that well and all of this that people are ranting about was almost certainly an attempt to do something about their pre-existing falling position. 

 The current model was working for WotC, it's Hasbro that was failing. This is why Alta Fox wanted WotC spun off, because Hasbro was dragging it down. We are talking 25% of Hasbro's revenue but 70%+ of the profit. Hasbro is a failing company, and WotC would have been doing better without them. They are trying to revitalized the brand sure, but they made poor decisions to the business model, and most of those mistakes over the last two years are coming from Hasbro C-Suite or people put in WotC from them who don't understand the brand or the market.

This is why hedge funds were calling out executives by name directly. I think the investment in DND beyond was a good call personally, they should have expanded upon it and created a competitive VTT with integrated tools. But they tried to force their hand too hard and it hurt the brand.

Quote from AtrusBlack >>

 The current model was working for WotC, it's Hasbro that was failing. This is why Alta Fox wanted WotC spun off, because Hasbro was dragging it down. We are talking 25% of Hasbro's revenue but 70%+ of the profit. Hasbro is a failing company, and WotC would have been doing better without them. They are trying to revitalized the brand sure, but they made poor decisions to the business model, and most of those mistakes over the last two years are coming from Hasbro C-Suite or people put in WotC from them who don't understand the brand or the market.

This is why hedge funds were calling out executives by name directly. I think the investment in DND beyond was a good call personally, they should have expanded upon it and created a competitive VTT with integrated tools. But they tried to force their hand too hard and it hurt the brand.

Sadly, that's a pretty common story with corporations buying up profitable smaller companies. Reminds me of when I worked at the headquarters for Borders Bookstores. They were trying to expand like crazy with these giant megastores, but they could never turn a profit off of them. They were just growing to please investors. All of it was paid for by Waldenbooks - that chain of tiny little bookstores in shopping malls all over the US (maybe elsewhere, but I'm not sure, and Borders was the one who prided itself on getting into new countries despite not having any support infrastructure there). 

Waldenbooks were nearly pure profit despite being less revenue than the Borders megastores, which had plenty of revenue but mostly operated at losses. It lead to all of them going out of business. If Waldenbooks had stayed independent, there's a decent chance they might have survived even now. But the larger Borders bookstores sucked all of their profits away to feed an unsustainable growth. 

Same thing at a web app company I worked at in the early 2000's that actually survived the dotcom bubble. It was run by a couple of really smart brothers but was bought by a larger corporation which eventually pushed them out, and then despite it being very profitable - all of those profits were eaten up by the other failing divisions until the whole thing went out of business.

When one division is the only one profitable and is keeping an entire corporation afloat, typically the rest of the corp winds up dragging the whole thing down until it all collapses. I hope that doesn't happen here, since as others have said, that inevitably leads to a lot of people out of work.

So, bottom line, from personal experience, if Hasbro fails (which is looking not too impossible), it will not be a good thing for D&D or DDB. It will take them both down with it unless they are carved up into pieces that a bunch of international investment firms buy up with zero interest in providing a good gaming experience, and only wondering how they can flip them for some quick profit.

MTG is the real cash cow of the WotC Business, after the OGL debacle its going to be a challenge to get revenue growth out of DnD and so I can see a cash strapped Hasbro selling the DnD brand to clear some debt.

Quote from Kotath >>

 

But is it D&D specifically that has been 'doing well' or is it Magic? 

And if the model was working so well for WotC, then why did they get bought out just 2 years after acquiring TSR? Or is this a model not introduced until after Hasbro had bought WotC out?

Hasbro has more physical merchandise, you know, those things like physical 'books and toys' that people are screaming about WotC moving away from? 

Here is the Annual Report, which includes the financials. On page 6, you will find this quote: "Tabletop and digital gaming revenues grew
behind several record set releases for MAGIC: THE GATHERING and continued growth in DUNGEONS & DRAGONS." In other words, while D&D grew, Magic had set new records for them. 

On page 67, you can find a very informative revenue comparative breakdown. Even though WotC's segment of revenues has been growing very nicely, 62% of the total revenues is still from consumer products. 42% growth in WotC revenues only dipped the Consumer Products revenues 5%. That is a LOT of D&D sales that would be needed to supplant the conventional toys and games. 

 OGL 1.0 came out in 2004, not 1999. It was introduced to allow expansion of the brand and offset cost and work, and in the long run it worked. Without it, D&D 3.5 wouldn't have dominated the market, and when they shifted away, sales dropped behind during 4E. Going back to it helped 5E a lot, along with the media blitz and success of media like Stranger Things, Critical Role (which now has the top fantasy series and top overall show on Amazon Prime), and the increase acceptance of "nerd culture" or "nerd chic". I get trying to increase revenue but they had better ways of doing it, time tested ways with the open ended community content generation, and now a subscription revenue stream that could have been developed further into a VTT power house if they really wanted too. But they pulled the trigger, let ego the idea of quick returns get in the way, and lacked foresight because the looming axe of Hasbro's failures and Hedge-funds being inpatient with the performance of the CEO and C-Suite, especially after the Magic debacle.

Edit: Correction the one that most use is from 2004. 1.0 plain was 2000, a thru f came later.

Not getting involved,  but on the shareholder call it was noted specifically that D&D is doing spectacular. While the Magic sales targets were passed with record sales, revenue share was up more with D&D driving the larger chunk of profits. The Division as a whole significantly outperformed all projections, and D&D was far more a focus than Magic, with higher brand recog and better overall sell through.

additionally, a sell off is opposed by analysts, who want a spin off following the sale of film and TV production assets and more lucrative IP licensing. They also want more D&D cross merchandising, seeing it as a short term growth with rapid fall off.

so, those thinking things will tank are way more bearish than baseline, which is very much bullish.

now, again, not getting involved so don’t be giving me guff unless unless it comes with a payment.

Quote from Kotath >>

Quote from AtrusBlack >>

 OGL 1.0 came out in 2004, not 1999. It was introduced to allow expansion of the brand and offset cost and work, and in the long run it worked. Without it, D&D 3.5 wouldn't have dominated the market, and when they shifted away, sales dropped behind during 4E. Going back to it helped 5E a lot, along with the media blitz and success of media like Stranger Things, Critical Role (which now has the top fantasy series and top overall show on Amazon Prime), and the increase acceptance of "nerd culture" or "nerd chic". I get trying to increase revenue but they had better ways of doing it, time tested ways with the open ended community content generation, and now a subscription revenue stream that could have been developed further into a VTT power house if they really wanted too. But they pulled the trigger, let ego the idea of quick returns get in the way, and lacked foresight because the looming axe of Hasbro's failures and Hedge-funds being inpatient with the performance of the CEO and C-Suite, especially after the Magic debacle.

Edit: Correction the one that most use is from 2004. 1.0 plain was 2000, a thru f came later.

 

Ok, so it was not any WotC plan at all. It was a Hasbro plan, 5 years after Hasbro had bought WotC. Really not sure how that strengthens your point.

D&D was already, still, the dominant RPG even then. Even the coming of 4e did not mess that up. ALL RPG's were failing at that time. You were either not around during the initial boom in the 80's or are looking back with rose coloured glasses. I would not be surprised based on your rhetoric to learn you started playing in the 3.5e years. It sounds like you don't even know or remember the controversy and mess that was 3.0.

Who, exactly, was their biggest competitor at the time? If you say Pazio, remember, that is a knock-off 3.5e who capitalized on the mess that was 4e and soaked up disgruntled fans from the 3.0 and 4.0 fallout.

Meanwhile, I see that you have ignored my comments regarding Hasbro's financial situation completely, instead arguing as if this is still 2004 instead of nearly 20 years later.

Been playing since 2nd Edition, the age of Thac0, but spare me that obvious baiting. That sort of attitude is toxic to the community. And if we are talking rose colored glasses, D&D wasn't the top of table top games during 3x or 4E era's, and the game that was, I didn't even play it.

Was Hasbro directly involved with the OGL/D20 compatible licenses? No, not really, it was Wizards plan, at the time Hasbro didn't have much to do with anything wizards was doing, other than investing in them as a purchase, which Hasbro was doing plenty of at the time. They bought into the brand and the big thing at the time were the video games which captured both table top and PC gaming enthusiast, which is something Hasbro was more interested in.

They also had more competition with White Wolf and Shadow Run competing heavily in that space as well, with White Wolf making strides in table top spaces. It wasn't until 3.5 that D&D took off again in 2003, which is why the OGL was fixed to what most use, OGLa, and the official FAQ came out in 2004 to help guide people in how things worked and clarifications .During this time, if you want to look at table top games, Games Workshop was becoming their main competitor world wide, and doing far better in that space at the time. As for why they reworked things in 2003, why they had to refocus and "fix" D&D? It was that they lost the Pokemon TCG license in 2003, and Magic wasn't going to be enough to keep things going the way they wanted. Plus you had Yugioh nudging into that space as well.

So they did the smart thing, revamped it, made D&D grow again, and to save on resources really pushed the OGL and D20 compatible licenses harder.

When Hasbro C-Suite did step in was in fact during 4E, when they wanted to lock down and compete with video games and MMO's, namely make it "like WOW". They introduced Greg Leeds as the new CEO of WotC, who ushered in the Game System License. The GSL did not go over well, they created their, "biggest rival" Paizo, despite it's actually Games Workshop still at the time. There were the lawsuits in 2009 when they tried to shut down any digital sales of PDF's for 3.5 related material and 4E material, even from DrivethruRPG. This is when War hammer seemed to dominate gaming stores for table top gaming. But Wizards still had Magic, which was continuing to dominate it's niche and Hasbro had let that game grow without interfering.

After the failure of 4E, WotC had to go back and rework 5E and bring back OGL 1.0.This would be that perfect storm moment I mentioned earlier. In 2016 Chris Cocks replaced Greg and he took hands off approach with the company, things were going great for WotC till about 2021 when Hasbro decided to make Chris Cocks COO of WotC and assume direct executive management of the company. The end Covid high is when the "get rich quick schemes" seem to settle in imho. And be fair to Chris, he did finalize the acquisition of DDB, which I still think was a move in the right direction, but considering how quick they moved him up to CEO of Hasbro, it says a lot about how haphazard leadership is at that level. Hell, he hurt their biggest cash cow Magic, and once again, thanks to direct meddling Hasbro damaged D&D and WotC's reputation with poor leadership and management decisions and placement.

Sadly, poor management and leadership by people who don't understand the community is sort of a curse with D&D, even going back to TSR. You can find the reasoning, but being a person invested in this franchise, this game, as heavily as I am, I would rather the game I enjoyed for the last three decades wasn't dragged down because of get rich quick management. I personally think Chris saw the gravy train ending and wanted anyway to keep things going, and the new blood he brought in gave idea's but they just were not viable with the community as a whole, and thus when the one Hedge fund who was heavily invested noticed, they called out every mistake he made and the mistakes of those he put in there, and other big investors followed along.

One continuing factor is Hasbro doing something to interfere, by either putting people in positions that don't understand the brand, or taking direct control in the case of shifting Chris to COO. Hell, despite the awkward missteps of Kyle, I think even he's just a fall guy executive in the end to take the hate then "resign" with a "thanks for taking the bullet" check.

Reflecting upon it, after this long winded post, I think that Wizards should still be spun off, and new C-suite put in, Chris though... hmmm, I think he should be put back in as CEO of Wizards, he did make some good decisions, but we need someone people on the board who understand the brand at a fundamental level.

Quote from Doranur_Aleguzzler >>

 I will not be along for the ride, however.

 Then what are you here for other than to troll these forums?  You talk as if you have left but clearly haven't. 

Quote from Yurei1453 >>

Paizo acquiring D&D would A.) never happen, and B.) be an absolute unmitigated disaster.

Paizo is not actually any better than Wizards of the Coast.  They're not any worse.  Paizo is a for-profit gaming and publishing company that wants to sell books and will do whatever it thinks it can get away with to sell those books.  Paizo is also deeply invested in the failure of D&D, as D&D's fall gives room for their flagship Pathfinder product to rise.  Paizo didn't milk the OGL situation for all it was worth because they loved the gaming community, they milked it because their biggest competitor in the space faceplanted onto a landmine and Paizo was not about to let the opportunity to capitalize on their foe's mistake go by.  Paizo is actively hoping and praying that 5e never recovers from this, that One D&D fails to gain traction at all due to this, and that the gaming community ends up naturally standardizing on Pathfinder instead of D&D and thus pushes Paizo to prominence.

Also: Paizo does not begin to have the financial headroom to acquire D&D wholesale from Hasbro even if Hasbro was on fire and in mid-bankruptcy.  What is more likely to happen is that Wizards will simply spin off into its own company again - there were a number of investors and stakeholders who were angrily demanding just that when Hasbro kept announcing decline after decline.  But what is more likely by far is that Hasbro will cling to Wizards like a shipwreck survivor to a liferaft.  Wizards is its single most profitable business unit, and D&D is a desperately needed piece of diversification for Hasbro.  Hasbro does very poorly during global pandemics and supply disruptions, and it doesn't have much pull with older audiences.  D&D is an answer to all of these, and it's already a solid, well-performing brand.  It's not a giant money hose like M:tG, but it consistently performs.  They're not gonna let it go.

 I totally agree with Yurei. Plus I don’t want Pathfinder to become the dominant game in the industry because Pathfinder is really complicated and it literally gives me a headache just trying to create a character.

Quote from Deyric >>

Quote from Doranur_Aleguzzler >>

 I will not be along for the ride, however.

 Then what are you here for other than to troll these forums?  You talk as if you have left but clearly haven't. 

 My sub expires later this week, until then, you're stuck with me.

Quote from Kotath >>

If you had been through all that, again, why the misremembering? White Wolf never had the same market share. Shadowrun is not even strictly the same genre. 

Curious what your evidence is that Hasbro was hands off with respect to WotC. You also seem to be implying that 4e failed because no OGL and the unpopularity of the mechanics had nothing to do with it, because, after all, why would players care about mechanics when they should be caring about the profit margins of third party content creators?

And you still have not responded to anything regarding Hasbro's actual financial statements. 

It is easy to criticize any company when your stake is your luxury product being the price you think it should be and you have no stake in the actual survival of the company. 

 I did respond, the fact that you didn't understand it is not my fault. As whole, I will trust the professionals that are invested in the company over you.

And the information on Hasbro being hands off is easy to find. You can either just read it in the Wizards of the Coast Wikipedia page, or you can go deeper and delve into the the various sources said wiki leads too. Hasbro's interest in WotC stemmed from the IP's being used for videogames and other media, the tabletop aspect and tcg were left alone. Magic was secondary to the Pokemon TCG for them at the time even.

Also, acting as if just being only consumer of product means lesser to criticism and hand wave it is both insulting and trollish, so I won't continue this conversation with someone who is clearly acting in bad faith. But I will leave with this note,  I am both a consumer and investor, I have my 401K with Vanguard and a personal Roth which is managed by a private hedge fund that has some of it in Hasbro along with various other stocks. Playing cheer leader for the C-suites and ignoring the implications of their actions is not conductive to fixing the issues. It makes me wonder if you would be nay saying detractors if Bane Capitol suddenly started buying up the shares of Hasbro.