wizards of the coast retail outlets closing

lord of the mark · February 8, 2004, 23:04

Apparently their closing their US retail outlets (did they have any outside the US) to focus on publishing.

1. Plenty of nice board games available at heavy discounts, for the time being.

2. Thoughts on their apparently confused strategy - they used to be mainly RPG's, then all kinds of games and stuff. At one point a large PC game section then they dropped that.

3. Why do you think theyre closing - competition from a the discount retailers, the net, etc? A weakening market for board games? Failed high cost high mark up strategy???

4.Where else to get what they sold - DnD manuals, etc in bookstores. Mass market board games in discount chains. But they also sold some relatively obscure board games - net only now?

General Ludd · February 8, 2004, 23:06

Did they make anything worth buying that wasn't a book?

GhengisFarb™ · February 8, 2004, 23:12

They were originally a card game company, then gobbled up TSR (which made them an RPG company although the roleplaying products needed the card game products to finance everything) then got gobbled up themselves by Hasbro.

Being an old fogie, I've always considered them a card game company as that's what they started out as and that's where the money came from.

General Ludd · February 8, 2004, 23:19

eh, the card games can be bought everwhere from chapters to conveniance stores. (and any gaming store for the more 'obscure' ones) What did they sell in their outlet stores?

The only 'boardgame' I've ever seen from them was some lame D&D starter kit that a shop keeper hawked on me when I was a young kid interested in playing D&D

GhengisFarb™ · February 8, 2004, 23:29

I remember when they first started the WotC stores and they were supposed to be a chain of GameStore/Arcade/PC Game Store/ Internet Cafe. Kinda like a Babbages meets the local Game Store and gets lost at the college computer lab.

Never lived anywhere near one myself though.

lord of the mark · February 9, 2004, 10:33

Quote:

Originally posted by Osweld
Did they make anything worth buying that wasn't a book?

the stores carry stuff that they dont publish. When i was there this weekend they had all the standard board games - risk (in about 3 different versions) monopoly (about a dozen different versions) sorry, trouble, etc. Oh and a classic called "game of the states"

Also had Civilization the board game, Age of mythology the board game, Axis and Allies, and a variety of other more sophisticated board games, both historical and fantasy.

also party games, including "adult" ones.
Also various chess sets, etc.

POTM and I picked up a Klutz book of paperdolls, and a set of "Harry Potter" UNO cards. Both about 30% off. All items discounted at least 30%, some more.

In fact there was hardly anything there actually published by WOTC.

GhengisFarb™ · February 9, 2004, 11:28

Hasbro sold off the software elements to Infrogrames and I doubt they bought it for the retail outlets anyway. Most likely Hasbro wanted TSR and WotC (Magic the Gathering and the other card games).

I think this gives Hasbro something along the lines of 90+ percent of the card/board/rpg game market in the US.