Rolling for Initiative is a weekly column by Scott Thorne, PhD, owner of Castle Perilous Games & Books in Carbondale, Illinois and instructor in marketing at Southeast Missouri State University. This week, Thorne asks whether the TCG market is going through a cycle similar to the 1990s.
For anyone hoping to see Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast cut back on the number of sets released each year and to see fewer Universes Beyond sets releases, with numbers like this, it is just not happening. Last quarter, Hasbro’s total net revenue increased by 16%, largely driven by the $545 million in sales posted by Magic: The Gathering, up some 32% over the same period in 2025, the first-time quarterly sales for Magic have ever crossed the $500 million mark.
With the top three best-selling Magic sets all Universes Beyond (Final Fantasy, Marvel Super Heroes and The Lord of the Rings), why would Wizards and Hasbro not keep going back to the Universes Beyond well as often as it could? Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro are in business to make money and their customer base has shown it is willing to turn out for and purchase both the in-universe and Universes Beyond sets with very little price resistance, so the hobby game industry should brace itself for more Universes Beyond sets in 2027 and beyond.
Wizards of the Coast has already announced a surprise eighth booster set releasing this year, the Mystery Commander Booster set, which, much like the Mystery Booster 2 set, will be available at conventions and DTC via Festival in a Box (see “Festival in a Box“). Based on the history of the Mystery Boosters, I would expect to see a limited release of them into the hobby channel sometime within the next year and Magic players will avidly buy them, but as with the previous Mystery Boosters, I expect one to two releases into distribution, with the rest reserved for events.
Is this sustainable? Not over the long term. I expect to see a major shake-out in the market, not this year or 2027 but in 2028. There is an incredible amount of product hitting the market with more coming out this fall. Trading card games depend on discretionary income for their sales and with the increase in hits to customer income via tariffs and gas prices, that discretionary income drops.
The industry has not seen this level of demand for trading card games since the first flush of the trading card game boom in the mid-1990s. In the five years after Magic’s launch, TCGs such as Super Deck, Guardians, Wyvern, Spellfire, Towers in Time, Hyborean Gates, James Bond 007, Sim City, The Crow, Doomtrooper, Power Cardz and what I still consider the best-designed and most thematic TCG ever produced, Highlander, all released and competed for the customer’s dollar. None of them see widespread play or sales today. Much like the adage that it is time to get out of the stock market when your shoeshine person starts giving you stock tips, I started worrying when I saw boxes of Magic boosters next to the cash register in bars and restaurants. I am not seeing that this time (yet) but the number of TCGs vying for the customer’s dollar certainly has me worried.
Am I right to be worried or can the customer base absorb the number and price of TCGs hitting the market? Comments welcome at Castleperilousgames@gmail.com.
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
Source: ICv2
