Strixhaven Surpasses Lorwyn to Claim Title of Most Popular MTG Premier Set Ever

Magic: The Gathering’s latest major set is making waves in the sales arena: Secrets of Strixhaven has officially become the best-selling MTG premier set of all time.

This news comes from Hasbro’s recent earnings call, where it was revealed that after Lorwyn: Eclipsed claimed the title of the best-selling Magic premier set earlier this year, Secrets of Strixhaven quickly surpassed it. CEO Chris Cocks noted that Lorwyn not only outperformed the previous best-selling first-party set but did so by a significant margin, and Strixhaven then “handily beat Lorwyn: Eclipsed as well.”

In this financial context, a “premier” set refers to an MTG core or expansion set that introduces new, first-party cards into the Standard format. This means that Hasbro is not counting Universes Beyond sets like Final Fantasy, which still holds the record as the best-selling MTG set ever, raking in $200 million in just one day.

Thanks in large part to MTG, Hasbro’s revenue for Q1 saw a 13 percent increase year-over-year, with MTG revenue specifically up by 36 percent. The TMNT Universes Beyond set exceeded internal expectations, although Hasbro did not provide further details on its performance.

Currently, Hasbro’s digital gaming revenue isn’t quite matching the success of MTG, with a modest 3 percent year-over-year increase largely attributed to Monopoly Go! However, Hasbro is eager to change that. Reports indicate that the company has invested a staggering $1 billion into video games since 2018, establishing six game studios, creating an internal publishing division, and developing several titles, including two sci-fi games, Exodus and the D&D game Warlock, set to release next year. The success of the licensed-out Baldur’s Gate 3 has likely left Hasbro wishing it had developed that one in-house.

Cocks mentioned that the company plans to focus on creating games primarily around D&D, Magic, Transformers, and potentially some new properties. The emphasis will be on action-adventure and role-playing games for PC and console, while also partnering with top developers for more casual games, mobile titles, and emerging platforms like VR. He stated, “I think we’re the number one digital games licensor in the world by a fairly large margin. That’s a pretty lucrative business. It also really helps us reach a lot of different gamers and supports our efforts in building out our first-party capabilities.”