This is an update to my 2007 Game Industry Predictions.

I wrote:

“ 2007 will be the year that the mass market titans, Mattel and Hasbro, come into direct competition in the hobby gaming space, but the conflicts will be light skirmishes not major battles.  Powerful forces in both companies are at work which will lead to a clash as Hasbro’s Boys Toys group under COO Brian Goldner tries to take and hold a strategic position in the market, while Mattel’s game group fires shell after shell at the market in the hope that one will strike gold.  It is very possible that Hasbro or Mattel will buy a hobby gaming company, likely a trading card game publisher, before the end of 2007 as a foot soldier in that war.”

I’m calling this “Prediction Correct” on the basis of this event:

Mattel Buys Rights to Several Games

Mattel’s games group has acquired several Out of the Box games, including Apples to Apples, which incubated in the core hobby market before breaking out to the wider mass market.  While Mattel didn’t buy Out of the Box outright, I suspect that a lasting strategic partnership will arise out of this deal, giving Mattel’s Game Group a lot of insights as to how hobby games succeed.

There’s also been a stream of announcements out of Hasbro this year regarding various collectible gaming products that appear to be driven primarily by Hasbro’s goals, not WotC’s goals, specifically including the Transformers constructible game.  There are so many threads to that story that it really deserves its own blog entry, when I get time.