Hasbro is investing US$150 million a year into game development

CEO Chris Cocks has confirmed three first-party projects in the pipeline, including titles for G.I. Joe, Dungeons & Dragons and a new IP called Exodus.
November 21, 2024

Hasbro’s short-term future will be closely tied to video games and the company is committed to investing up to $150 million into creating new gaming projects, according to CEO Chris Cocks.

Hasbro’s expanding gaming strategy reportedly involves moving heavily into producing in-house titles, to supplement its existing licensing business with third-party developers such as Scopely (Monopoly GO!) and Larian Studios (Baldur’s Gate 3), according to reporting in Bloomberg. And Cocks’ plan is to launch up to two of these new games per year until the end of 2026. 

Three projects are already confirmed to be in the development pipeline, including a new Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game and a G.I. Joe action-adventure title that are both in the pre-production phase. These join the AAA-budget (US$60 million-plus) sci-fi RPG Exodus—a new IP headed up by Hasbro subsidiary Archetype Entertainment—that was announced last year. 

Meanwhile, Cocks is also toying around with developing two video games based on Hasbro’s flagship trading card game (TCG) Magic: The Gathering. If greenlit, one title will stay close to the original TCG, letting players collect as many cards as possible (inspired by popular mobile games Marvel Snap and Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket), while the other will be the first Magic video game built around Magic: The Gathering‘s Commander gameplay format. 

In Commander, a group of four players each uses a 100-card deck, consisting of 99 unique cards and a legendary creature they’ve built their strategy around. Wizards of the Coast supplements this format with several new TCG products each year, including dedicated booster sets featuring reprints of iconic cards and up to 23 pre-constructed decks. Commander is the most popular format in Magic‘s wheelhouse, according to Cocks. 

 

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