Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks (who previously held the same position at subsidiary Wizards of the Coast before moving up the chain) was featured in the latest episode of The Verge's Decoder podcast, talking about upcoming games like Exodus and Warlock as well as broader industry topics.
Cocks said he's pretty bullish, having played it, on the upcoming sci-fi action RPG developed at Archetype Entertainment by several former BioWare employees. He confirmed that the plan is to launch it in the first half of 2027 (the official press release from TGA 2025 mentioned early 2027), with the other game announced recently, an open world action/adventure called Warlock and set in the Dungeons & Dragons world, releasing in the latter half of next year.
The team on Exodus has been working on it since 2019. Our goal is to ship it in the first half of next year. I think it looks pretty good based on what I’ve played of it. I’m pretty bullish on it. And then we’ll be pairing that with another game called Warlock later in the year from a team up in Montreal. So I think we won’t just have Exodus, we’ll have Warlock, and we’ll have this fantastic stable of digital games. And so, as I said, any individual game has probably less than a 50 percent chance of being in the money, but when you hit, it hits well. And our perspective is that this is one of those businesses.
As I referenced earlier, we don’t think digital games are just a flash in the pan market. We’re going to be patient, we’re going to invest, and if we lose money in the short term, we’re going to build up our community, build up our capacity, and build up our ability to be able to execute with excellence. And I think over time, it’s going to be a difference maker for us and something that we’re happy we invested in.
In the podcast, the Hasbro executive also discussed the issues faced by the games industry. He mentioned partnering with studios in areas like Eastern Europe or Southeast Asia to reduce costs, although he also believes someone will discover how to use AI in a "high-quality" way that makes games better and more fun.
It’s growing, but it’s not growing like double digits; it’s growing kind of like mid-single digits, and it probably will continue to. They’re starting to suffer from more substitution, which is probably just a… If you look at it in hindsight, it’s just a different way of delivering video games, but you have this massive cost inflation for delivering the amount of content. If you want to develop a AAA video game, it’s a thousand man-years of effort minimum.
So with an audience that’s growing, but not growing leaps and bounds with more kind of substitution or new categories with inflation — which is going significantly faster than what your market is growing or what your pricing power can support — I think you have to think about things differently, I think you have to think about like, “Hey, when you make a game, are you always going to go to San Francisco or Austin, Texas to recruit that team, or are you going to go to these fantastic areas of talent in Southeast Asia, or China, or Eastern Europe and pair them with the team who really understands the market in question?” I think a lot of gamers don’t like AI in games today, but I think eventually, someone’s going to figure out how to use AI in a way that’s high quality and is fun and makes games better. So I also think you have to think through that.
Cocks quickly clarified that Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast aren't currently using AI in their pipelines for videogames like Exodus or Warlock, or for brands like Magic: The Gathering and D&D. However, Hasbro is using it "pretty effectively" in the concept phase of making toys based on their IPs, with the executive saying that maybe just one concept out of a thousand AI-generated works, but when it does, it might be magical, and it was created "basically for free".
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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