Hasbro attended a fireside chat at this year’s Goldman Sachs Communacopia & Technology Conference to speak about their general plan for the next 36 months. TFW2005 staff attended… so you don’t have to*.
The chat started with a discussion on the recent sale of eOne assets to Lionsgate. Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks mentioned that the toy giant is looking to ‘right-size’ their entertainment effort.
With toys, the company is focusing on ‘driving out costs, driving up share, and then driving growth’.
Hasbro is also looking to ‘fuel the very high-profit flame’ for digital games.
The company stated the following:
“And then just generally speaking [about] digital [gaming], there’s a massive opportunity both in licensing, and our owned and operated games inside of that area. You know, as particularly when you look at categories like mobile, there’s more and more of a premium that gaming companies are putting on brands that people have a strong affinity to; and breakthrough the clutter of these thousands of games that release literally every month. Whether it’s Monopoly on the casual-side, D&D or Magic: The Gathering on the more hardcore-side, or Transformers or G.I. Joe on the midcore-side, Hasbro has this amazing vault of IP that I think gives us a lot of ‘X Factor’ in terms of the value of the company and future potential of our brands.”
This statement comes just days after opening a new division (?) at Hasbro titled Hasbro Retro Arcade to focus more on the retro aspect of video games fueled by beat-’em-up styled arcade games such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge, Streets of Rage 4, and Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons.
As the first initiative of Hasbro Retro Arcade, the company will debut G.I. Joe: Wrath of Cobra. It is likely that a Transformers game will follow soon.
Are you looking forward to more video games based on Hasbro properties? Let us know of your thoughts on the thread attached to this news post.
News Post: Hasbro To Focus More On Digital Games
Unless the games get physical releases im not buying.
Really Chris Cock up?
COcks:
driving out costs, driving up share, and then driving growth? ????
Translation:
Firing the competent employees, increasing prices, Lowering Stockholder Share value and decreasing Growth.
Yeah, I'm sure making phone games
to try to get that micro transaction money
is going to solve you bombing Hasbro in your
Q2 Financial Statement Report Chris Cocks.
What happed to those top income 20% True Customers you bragged about
at that Boston Globe Interview? You gonna go chase those top 20% income guys in phone games now?
I wish they would focus on getting their products into stores so we can actually buy them. But I guess that's too much to ask.
Yeah, gang. Infantile jokes from middle-aged men are definitely the appropriate counterpoint to a strategic business decision rooted in fact.
C'mon y'all. Take a look at yourselves.
I vastly prefer physical games (and abhor mobile) as much as anyone but unless you have evidence to say the CEO is wrong about this market being low-to-middle risk and high-profit, you sound like fools if all you have is 4th grade dick jokes.
Even so, what did you expect from middle aged men that collect toys? Get off of your high horse. Let's not make redwoods out of rhododendrons.
As much as people complain about a lack of physical releases, in a lot of the world cell phone / mobile gaming is the ONLY thing. China especially.
There's a reason companies like Tencent are so gigantic in spite of having a minimal visible footprint in North American gaming.
Personally though, I come from a retro game cartridge collecting background (mostly NES/SNES), and in fact only joined the "modern" gamers with the Switch, because it scratches that itch with all of it's collections and remasters. It sounds as though the next Nintendo console is set to follow suit, but I'm fairly certain the next console generation will be my last.
I left physical films and music behind more than a decade ago, but when it comes to print or video games, I'm physical for life.
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