Fans are celebrating Magic: The Gathering's latest return to its own setting, but numbers don't lie—the Final Fantasy crossover boosted revenue 23%
The planes of the Magic: The Gathering multiverse are separated by the Blind Eternities, a mysterious between-space that's never been fully explored. The latest set, Edge of Eternities, visits the boundary of the Blind Eternities for the first time, using it as the locale for a science-fantasy space opera that pushes at the limit of Magic's genre as well as its physical space.
Still, it's been heralded as another return-to-form by Magic fans online, like the more trad-fantasy Tarkir: Dragonstorm before it, thanks to taking place within Magic's expansive multiverse rather than fully beyond it as recent crossovers have. These crossovers are, in the words of YouTube comments and Reddit posts, evidence that Wizards of the Coast doesn't have confidence in Magic's actual identity, and will only hurt its brand.
Yet, as Deadline recently reported, Final Fantasy is responsible for a 23% surge in Magic's revenue and has been a hit with fans of the JRPG series. "There's more people playing Magic, and there are more people who have never played Magic who are now playing Magic, than ever before," Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks said on an earning call.
Wizards of the Coast has the crossover down to a fine art. This isn't a Call of Duty gets American Dad skins situation, this more of an Injustice 2 gets Hellboy and the TMNT situation. More of Magic's experiments in cross-media multiversing have hit than have missed, and the Final Fantasy set—which is gorgeous, by the way—has benefited from following the example set by home runs like Middle-earth and Fallout.
Part of what makes Magic so well-suited to crossovers is that—and I mean this in the nicest possible way—it's not that interesting as a setting. While moments like the Brothers' War have been memorable standouts, Magic's plotlines have a tendency to fizzle out and its fiction is so allergic to describing characters you have to read it with the wiki open in another tab. Nobody I actually play Magic with is as invested in the setting as terminally online fans insist they are. Actual players in the real world are into Magic for the way it plays first and foremost, and its characters a distant second.
That said, Edge of Eternities is a solid expansion. I played at a prerelease event where its sci-fi art was praised repeatedly and everybody tried to pull off some of the spacecraft shenanigans it's made possible. Nobody did, and most of the games came down to more traditional play. I came back from behind thanks to a board wipe called Beyond the Quiet, then had an entire turn yoinked out from under me by The Dominion Bracelet, without ever managing to pull off any hijinx with the new mechanics Warp and Void.
Edge of Eternities is more of an experiment visually than it is systemically, but there's nothing wrong with that. And it certainly deserves better than being reduced to a convenient stick to beat Wizards of the Coast with.
Edge of Eternities will be available in Arena on July 29 and on tabletops from August 1. Pre-release events are running now.