Wizards of the Coast sees MTG’s Universes Beyond crossovers as good for the long-term health of the game. Over at his Blogatog blog, Magic: The Gathering’s head designer Mark Rosewater has responded to a fan who claimed “when the game jumps between IPs… buyers won’t stick around.”
As well as emphasizing the care R&D takes to think far into the future of Magic when making decisions, Rosewater reasons that, since those players haven’t quit yet, there’s no reason to think they will in the future.
“The vast majority of Universes Beyond purchasers are existing Magic players,” he explains. “We expect the buyers to stick around because they already have a track record of sticking around.”
Rosewater has good reason to be optimistic. Wizards has just had a hugely successful quarter, with about 45% revenue growth over last year. In a recent investor call, Hasbro’s CEO, Chris Cocks, was particularly optimistic about UB, and not just because MTG Final Fantasy is already the best-selling set of all time.
Cocks pointed to multiple areas of Magic that had exceeded expectations, and said that the Universes Beyond strategy was growing the overall playerbase, leading to knock-on effects for many MTG sets.
Of course, there is a big change coming to UB sets, which we haven’t yet felt the impact of. From Final Fantasy onwards, they’re going to be Standard-legal. But though it’s a significant shift, there’s no reason to think it’s going to have a negative impact on Magic’s playerbase, especially since the most popular paper format is Commander, where Universes Beyond cards have already been around for years.
And in another post yesterday, on April 29, Rosewater points out that there actually don’t seem to be that many fans upset about UB entering Standard. He says Wizards has considered creating a new MTG format free from Universes Beyond cards, but there doesn’t seem to be enough interest in the idea. “The vast majority of the players were fine with mixing and matching UB and non-UB cards,” he writes.
This year, Magic: The Gathering is releasing three Universes Beyond sets: Final Fantasy, MTG Spiderman, and MTG Avatar the Last Airbender. But only two of them are coming to MTG Arena. Presumably due to some licensing issues with Marvel, the Spiderman cards are going to receive all new names and artwork before they come to the Arena platform.
To stay up to date with everything that’s coming out this year, check out our guide to the MTG release schedule. And come share your favorite decks at our Discord.
Source: Wargamer
