Hasbro ready to Scrabble for games market share?

The news comes following the recent announcement that the company has bought back from Atari the digital gaming rights to its key franchises, including Monopoly, Scrabble and Risk. It could see Hasbro Interactive return to the market after an absence of six years, when its games division was sold to Infogrames.

It’s not clear exactly what Hasbro is planning having taken the digital rights to its IP back in-house, but senior VP of corporate communications Wayne Charness told MCV:

There are clearly many digital options for Hasbro, and we are in the process of evaluating our options.”

The toy industry is facing increasingly tough competition from the flourishing video games market – particularly with Nintendo’s Wii and DS consoles currently enjoying great success in targeting a younger audience.

In addition, the rise in the casual games sector will not have gone unnoticed by Hasbro – and indeed this may well be the very area that the company is looking to enter once more.

It’s unlikely that Hasbro will enter the video games industry as forcefully and with the same expenditure as it did previously, but a more cautious return to interactive entertainment may not be a bad thing,” offered Ronnie Dungan, editor of leading trade title ToyNews.

It is very possible that Hasbro will look to leverage its traditional toy brands into the video games sector in order to target the older children it has lost to Nintendo and Sony in recent years.”