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For what it's worth, what's driving this thing right now is that the corporate view is that MTG has essentially peaked, and they need a new growth vector, and that's in D&D. This is public information, to be clear. There's no speculation, this is what they've said.
The speculation is that it's bad as they need to essentially quintuple their revenue on the quick or the department is going to be mothballed.
God, the stupidity of corporate execs will never cease to amaze me. "Our one product isn't growing, so we need to try to get another product to grow even if we kill it in the process." When are these morons going to get it through their thick skulls that the point of a business is to make money, not to grow? Infinite growth is not sustainable nor even necessarily desirable.
I think part of the problem is that the company success isn't directly aligned with their success. If they turn a product from a middling success to a great success, their career is basically made for the rest of their life; they'll have an amazing feather in their cap they can bring up at parties. But if it fails, as long as it doesn't fail so disastrously it makes it into econ textbooks, they'll basically be fine. They might get fired but they'll probably have a fine compensation package, and they'll still get another exec job at some other corporation.
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