Hasbro – parent company of DnD publisher Wizards of the Coast – is working on a new, licensed “triple-A videogame” with the developer team behind Warhammer 40k: Space Marine 2 at Saber Interactive, CEO Chris Cocks has announced.
Revealing the new project in Hasbro’s Q4 and full year 2024 investor call on Thursday, Cocks offers titillatingly sparse detail on the game, but he does confirm it will have both single player and multiplayer modes, and will use Saber Interactive’s ‘Swarm’ technology, used in Warhammer 40k: Space Marine 2 to animate vast, flowing hordes of Tyranids.
Cocks doesn’t clarify, at this stage, if Saber’s game will be based on Dungeons and Dragons, Magic: The Gathering, or another Hasbro-owned IP – it could be Transformers or My Little Pony themed, for all we know. But he does reiterate in Thursday’s call that there are more big-budget digital games in D&D’s near future, and doesn’t talk about any other Hasbro properties in relation to videogame projects – so it’s fair to suspect the newly announced project could be D&D related.
And, answering an investor question on the call, Cocks says explicitly that Hasbro “will use the Warhammer 40k Space Marine 2 team to develop the product”. He explains that the game is a “co-publishing deal” and that both Hasbro and Saber will be “the publishers of record”.
“It helps us to be able to unlock some of our IP in new ways,” Cocks adds.
Spurred on by the blockbuster success of Baldur’s Gate 3 – undeniably the best DnD game ever made – Hasbro clearly has its eye on videogame publishing over the next few years, with Cocks excitedly pointing to the release of the firm’s sci-fi videogame Exodus, currently scheduled for some time in 2026.
BG3, he says, continued to sell well “over the course of 2024” and performed twice as well as their initial forecasts overall. Lots more games are on the way, Hasbro’s bosses reaffirm on Thursday’s call, and the firm’s already said that more Dungeons and Dragons titles are among them.
“We should expect 1-2 [videogame] releases per year from 2026 to 2030,” Cocks tells the listening investors – “we’ve been saying that for several years”.
“The new news is that we’re going to lean more into [joint ventures] and partnerships,” he adds – saying that “the Saber Interactive deal is an example of that”.
If this new project is a DnD game, we can’t wait to find out more about it – Space Marine 2 x Forgotten Realms is a tempting prospect. But we’d expect to hear a lot more about the incoming Mass Effect-alike Exodus before we get any more hard details about the Saber game.
Besides all this mysterious talk of upcoming AAA videogame releases, Cocks and Hasbro’s Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer Gina Goetter are positively gleeful about ongoing growth in sales and profit for new Magic: The Gathering sets – especially its partner licensing projects like the Universes Beyond crossover sets and limited edition MTG Secret Lair products.
“We think the real power of Universes Beyond… is building the Magic install base,” Cocks explains, pointing to the record sales of 2023’s MTG Lord of the Rings set and highlighting that last week’s MTG Final Fantasy pre-orders sold out significantly faster, indicating huge demand.
Commander gift bundles for Lord of the Rings “took a week to sell out”, he says; “for Final Fantasy they took an hour to sell out”.
“So we expect Final Fantasy to do pretty well.”
CFO Gina Goetter likewise tells investors they’re not expecting the MTG money printer to slow down. “We’re anticipating a strong year [for Magic] this year, but we’re also anticipating continued strength into ‘26 and ‘27” she says on the call, as well as outlining more cost savings over the next few years, in line with Hasbro’s current drive for profitability.
We’ll have to wait and see whether that entails more sweeping job cuts like the ones Hasbro made in December 2023, when it laid off 15% of its staff – 1,100 people – two weeks before Christmas.
For more details of upcoming Magic: The Gathering releases, read our fully updated MTG release schedule, or check out our DnD release schedule what’s coming next for the best tabletop RPG around.
And, if you want a feel for the Swarm technology Saber is bringing to its new Hasbro-partnered videogame (whatever it may be) – read our complete Warhammer 40k Space Marine 2 review.
Source: Wargamer
