The upcoming Final Fantasy set is already the best-selling Magic: The Gathering release of all time, Hasbro’s CEO Chris Cocks revealed in a Hasbro investor call on Thursday.
Since it hasn’t even been released yet, we’re assuming this means that preorder sales have been so strong as to outstrip the total earnings of every single MTG set before it.
Cocks revealed the perhaps shocking detail while talking about the future of Magic, in the Hasbro 2025 Q1 earnings conference call on April 24. “Final Fantasy will be the best-selling set of all time on day one. It already is,” he said.
The high prices of those preorders, which opened in February, will no doubt have helped MTG Final Fantasy break this record. Despite being Standard-legal, Final Fantasy products are selling at costs normally associated with premium products like Horizons or Masters sets
While earlier this week, fans were amused that the Universes Beyond deal with Marvel is forcing Wizards to create Arena-only reskins of an entire set, Hasbro’s CEO was extremely enthusiastic about UB during the call.
“It’s very clear to us that Universes Beyond as a strategy has increased the total active install base of Magic players, both in terms of reigniting lapsed fans as well as bringing in new fans,” Cocks said.
According to Hasbro, Wizards of the Coast – and Magic: The Gathering in particular – outperformed expectations for the first quarter of 2025, with MTG revenue up 45% year-on-year. And it sounds like Universes Beyond’s effectiveness at bringing in fans both old and new is a large part of that.
When asked the main reason Magic had done better than expected in this quarter, Cocks listed a number of factors, from old sets selling better than anticipated, to the strong performance of Tarkir Dragonstorm, to Secret Lair. “It’s difficult to identify just one thing. Really what we’re seeing is an expansion of the playerbase,” he explained.
With many industries in turmoil right now due to the US tariffs on China, Hasbro seems to be relying on Wizards to help it weather the storm. Cocks said that Hasbro has “more of a buffer than the typical toy company” due to domestic or digitally-based parts of the business and that “the momentum in Wizards provides a strategic buffer as we navigate wider cost pressures”.
For years now, Wizards of the Coast and digital gaming have been the only sections of the company experiencing proper growth, and since Hasbro said in the call that 50% of its toys come from China, that seems unlikely to change.
MTG Final Fantasy arrives on June 13. You can see how it fits in with the rest of the year’s Magic sets in our MTG release schedule guide. You should also come join our Discord for loads of great chats and giveaways.
Source: Wargamer
