Hasbro, parent company of Wizards of the Coast, plans to strengthen its position in the video game industry. To achieve this goal, the owner of brands like Dungeons & Dragons and Monopoly has split $1 billion between studios working on several AAA titles.
Exodus
In an interview with GameSpot, Wizards of the Coast head of digital product development Dan Ayoub revealed that Hasbro not only license its IPs to third-party developers but also wants to focus on internal production. “We’ve got a billion dollars in games being developed right now, across multiple studios across North America,” he noted.
This move was partly motivated by the success of Scopely’s mobile hit Monopoly Go!, which has already surpassed $2 billion in lifetime revenue, and Larian’s successful RPG Baldur’s Gate 3. The latter has likely sold around 15 million units globally, given Swen Vincke’s recent comments that the game “almost doubled” Divinity: Original Sin II (previously estimated at 7.5 million copies sold).
Hasbro’s fees for Monopoly Go! remain undisclosed, but BG3 brought in around $90 million in revenue for WotC from its launch through December 31. So it is no surprise that the company wants the whole pie rather then only getting pieces of it through licensing deals.
According to Ayoub, Hasbro currently has “hundreds of people across all of these studios who are actively hiring as well.” The company is now building these studio infrastructures, so “it’s quite a large endeavor happening under the Hasbro umbrella right now.”
It is unclear how much money each of the company’s studios received. Earlier this month, senior VP of digital strategy and licensing Eugene Evans told Game File that Hasbro has about 40 games in development. Some of the projects include sci-fi RPG Exodus from Archetype Entertainment, a new G.I. Joe project from Atomic Arcade, and an untitled D&D title from Invoke Studios (known for Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance).