Rolling for Initiative is a weekly column by Scott Thorne, PhD, owner of Castle Perilous Games & Books in Carbondale, Illinois and instructor in marketing at Southeast Missouri State University. This week, Thorne comments on the Edge of Eternities prerelease and on Magic: The Gathering news from the Hasbro earnings report (see “Hasbro Reports“).
We did not have much interest in Edge of Eternities leading up to the prerelease, but I was pleasantly surprised by the response to the set. There were almost no preorders, but we have almost sold through all our Bundles and half of our booster boxes (though not Collector boosters; those have sold, but as single packs) in 24 hours. I’m certainly glad my staff and my distributors talked me out of cutting our orders, as I learned after the fact that it looks as if we will see product shortages similar to what we saw with Tarkir: Dragonstorm, with several weeks passing with only a trickle of product coming into the channel.
Sales of Magic have been really strong this year with Tarkir: Dragonstorm the best-selling Premier set of all time and Universes Beyond: Final Fantasy the best-selling set of all time (see “Hasbro“). As reported by ICv2, it took the previous best-selling Magic set, Lord of the Rings, six months to reach $200 million in sales. Universes Beyond: Final Fantasy crushed that number, reaching $200 million in sales in just one weekend. The company’s stock price reached a 52-week high upon investors hearing that news, only to drop 5% when Hasbro announced the company would take a $1 billion charge against its earnings due to the effects of tariffs.
Hasbro’s overall Q2 revenue dropped 1% from last year, but WotC and digital games were up 16% year-over-year while toy sales dropped 16%. With most of Hasbro’s toys produced overseas, tariffs hit the segment hard. Since Magic is primarily produced in the U.S., it has much less exposure to the whipsaw effects of tariffs going on and then coming off (see “Tariffs, Diamond Bankruptcy“).
I fear, however, that the lesson WotC will learn from this is that the company should keep releasing more Universes Beyond sets more often as well as even more pop culture-themed Secret Lair sets. Edge of Eternities has not even had its official release date (that is August 1, 2025 to the mass market), but I am already seeing promotions appearing for Universes Beyond: Spider-Man, including my preliminary allocations for the set and the card lists for the new Spider-Man Welcome Decks. I keep expecting to see a pullback in the amount of Magic we sell, but our prerelease weekend numbers for Edge of Eternities are the best I have seen for a Premier set, as compared to a Universes Beyond set, in the last few years.
Given, according to Hasbro’s earnings call, only about 15% of Magic players play in store or online, and most new players come from the age group 11 to 14, I would think it a good idea to create programs targeting that age group. We currently run a Junior Magic group but it has anemic turnout so we are going to look at how we can do more outreach to this age group.
How was your Edge of Eternities prerelease? Are K-Pop and Romantasy good brands for WotC to pursue or should they develop sets appealing to younger audiences? Email your comments to castleperilousgames@gmail.com.
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
Read more at this site