Nilay Patel

Hello, and welcome to Decoder.

I'm Nilay Patel, editor-in-chief of The Verge, and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems.

Today, I'm talking with Chris Cox, the CEO of Hasbro.

You know Hasbro.

The toys and games company makes some of the most iconic products in the world, from Transformers and My Little Pony to Monopoly and Magic the Gathering, and of course, Dungeons and Dragons.

Chris was last on Decoder three years ago.

He was a newer CEO then, just a year into the role.

And we spent quite a bit of time talking about his plan to collect more data, spin off parts of Hasbro, and really think about the future of collectibles, which at that time meant NFTs.

Look, a lot's happened in three years.

NFTs just weren't one of them.

You'll hear Chris laugh about how wrong he was throughout this conversation.

You know what did happen, though?

Well, a global supply chain and manufacturing nightmare precipitated by tariffs, the AI explosion, and of course the endless chaos of the video game industry.

And then there's the relentless continuation of a trend that defines the modern toy industry.

More and more toys and games being made for adults who have a bunch of money instead of kids who don't.

Chris and I talked about that quite a bit, and I think his point of view here is at once totally logical and also completely surprising.

Chris and I also talked a lot about Hasbro investing so heavily into video games in a time of relative uncertainty in the industry.

For example, you'll hear Chris mention several times how important Monopoly Go, the mobile game, is for Hasbro.

And while Magic the Gathering and Dungeons and Dragons are already huge brands, Hasbro's trying to expand with original video games, like Exodus, which is slated to be released next year.

That's another huge set of challenges in an era where video game studios are shutting down more or less weekly, and the distribution market is controlled by a small handful of players like Sony, Microsoft, and Steam.