Yes please and thank you (Hasbro)
Hasbro has talked about the company’s new video game plans, which include something Transformers related and no live service projects.
Long-time readers will know how much we love Transformers, which is why it’s disappointing that there hasn’t been a big budget video game based on the franchise in ages, basically not since the Xbox 360 era.
There have been smaller games over the years, mostly on mobile, but none of them are especially noteworthy. While Transformers: Reactivate, an online co-op shooter that debuted at The Game Awards 2022, was abruptly cancelled before it could even launch a closed beta.
Recent comments by Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks, however, give us hope that something more substantial will be done with the franchise, and the others that Hasbro owns, since the company is investing $1 billion into building traditional video games – and purposefully not live service titles.
Hasbro has been involved in the video game space for decades, having previously published games through its now defunct Hasbro Interactive subsidiary, before doing the Disney thing and simply licensing its franchises out to other companies.
Nowadays, though, the company is looking to build its own games internally; an effort that began in 2018 with the formation of six studios.
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Hasbro’s first two projects were highlighted during The Game Awards 2025: Mass Effect-esque role-player Exodus (which launches this year) and third person action adventure game Warlock: Dungeons & Dragons (which is scheduled for 2027).
As for what’s next, Cocks not so subtly suggests, during an interview with The Game Business, that a new Transformers project is brewing in the background alongside games based on other popular franchises.
‘We’ll be building games mostly around Dungeons & Dragons, Magic: The Gathering, Transformers, maybe some of our other properties, maybe selectively some new stuff. It’ll be very focused on action adventure and role-playing games for PC and console,’ he explained.
‘And then, we’ll partner with the best in the business on more casual games, mobile games, new and emerging platforms like VR, et cetera. … It also really helps us reach a lot of different gamers, and helps to fund those efforts in building out our first-party capabilities.’
As a reminder Hasbro owns not just Dungeons & Dragons, Magic: The Gathering, and Transformers, but also Power Rangers, G.I. Joe, M.A.S.K., My Little Pony, Peppa Pig, PJ Masks, Furby, Nerf, Mr Potato Head, and various board games, including Monopoly.
Surprisingly, it doesn’t sound like Cocks is being tempted by the siren song of live service games and recognises the pitfalls of trying to break into such an oversaturated market.
‘You can invest $100 million to build a really great mobile game, or a really great games-as-a-service, like a shooter. And the upside is you make billions and billions. But how many people achieve that upside? It’s very low single-digit percentages, if even that. The downside is you don’t make anything back, and it’s basically a wash.’
He added, ‘I think there’s always going to be demand for good games that deliver a nice 40 to 50-hours’ worth of content set at a fair price.’
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Cocks also assured Hasbro won’t give up on the whole venture at the first sign of trouble, acknowledging that these efforts require a degree of patience.
‘Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast know how to make great games, and we’ve set up a couple new franchises, and we have a nice long pipeline for the next decade of game development,’ he said.
We’d certainly welcome a new Transformers game (there was an unsubstantiated rumour of one on Reddit recently), if this is the approach Hasbro has planned for it, rather than handing it to a small studio and asking them to crank something out in two years.
The very concept of Transformers lends itself perfectly to video games, but it really needs a big budget behind it to truly take advantage of its premise.
Alternatively, it’d be nice if Hasbro could re-release the old Transformers: War For Cybertron duology, which are fantastic third person shooters that were tragically delisted from all digital storefronts, after Activision lost its licencing deal with Hasbro.
It has long been rumoured and speculated that those games, along with the equally good Transformers Devastation by PlatinumGames, will be re-released but nothing has yet to come of it.
Although he doesn’t mention it, Cocks might be including Baldur’s Gate 4 among those projects that are best handled internally, even though it found great success partnering with Larian Studios on Baldur’s Gate 3.
That said, in 2024, Hasbro did say it had entered discussions with other studios on handling Baldur’s Gate 4 but either way, that’s not a game that can be rushed out in just a few years, at least not if Hasbro wants it to be on the same calibre as its predecessor.
We do not envy whoever has to make the sequel to a game as successful and beloved as Baldur’s Gate 3 (Larian Studios)
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