Hasbro’s recent Magic the Gathering Final Fantasy crossover card set made $200m sales in one day.
This comes courtesy of Hasbro CEO Christian Cocks, who yesterday revealed the figure during a Hasbro earnings call. This staggering figure eclipses that milestone set by prior sets, including an earlier Lord of the Rings set, which according to Cocks passed the $200m mark a while after its initial release.
Cocks stated: “Lord of the Rings took six months to deliver $200 million of revenue, Final Fantasy took one day, and we left demand on the table […] So we couldn’t produce enough.
“I think we increased production runs on it 4x pre-release. It was substantially by many, many very high double-digit percentages ahead of any other production run we’ve ever done, and we left the market wanting more.”
While this figure is obviously great for Hasbro, fans of Magic the Gathering are torn on these sorts of crossover sets. On one hand, it’s cool to see your favourite IPs get some representation inside lovely little packs. I recall being especially excited about the Warhammer crossover, for example.
On the other hand, Magic the Gathering has a rich history of its own lore and characters, and with these crossover sets continuing to bring in the big bucks, there’s a reasonable concern that years-long story lines will take a back seat to new partnerships between Hasbro and various media companies across the world.
If you think of it from the perspective of a Hasbro shareholder, would you rather a return to Bloomburrow, or for Captain America to get a mythic rare red, white, and blue legendary creature? Which would make more money?
That being said, Hasbro is pushing its own Magic the Gathering IP into other mediums, which could offer a new avenue to promote and revel in decades’ worth of worldbuilding. For one, the company has expressed a desire to push into TV and movies, and is keen on making Baldur’s Gate 4 (though isn’t in a hurry).
