Letting cash cows die
As someone who has occupied executive management positions and runs the IP department in a $250M/yr company, I think I can offer a perspective on the notion that Hasbro would never let a cash cow like ASL die. The short answer is "of course they would".
It is important to understand that resources of all kinds (cash, people, energy to pursue new and additional things, management support) are always in short supply in every company. Not enough "capital" of one sort or another do do everything they want to do. So they apply limited resources to a limited number of projects.
It's even worse with the Hasbro situation where they may very well not have had any champion(s) at the executive level within the company itself. That is nearly always fatal, as in that case there would be no voice to keep the opportunity in management's eye and continue to make a case for it.
However, even good management sometimes makes bad business decisions. Many times they go with inaccurate assumptions because there was not time or energy to develop fact-based assumptions that would help to make a better quality decision. Or the people tasked with developing the business plan are incompetent or too inexperienced to know how to do a good job at it - happens every day.
There are many, many reasons why Hasbro wouldn't have pursued ASL on their own, and frankly very few why they would have. Most companies have many more potential projects they could ever work on than what they actually pursue. Evan aside from politcs and "pet projects" concerns, issues such as strategic direction, R&D budgets, current market share in each product line, profitability, legal risks, and tons of other factors come into play, and often overwhelm "cash cow" new project considerations. I have several times fought unsuccessfully for extremely profitable projects, just to see them lose in the executive staff for these other reasons. And in these cases I was an internal champion of the project with a voice into all of the other decision makers.
I'm pretty firmly of the belief that if Curt Schilling didn't step up when he did, ASL would have had a slow death on the vine. No way would it be where it is today. The amount of jack Hasbro was requiring isn't found at small boardgame companies - they don't have the financial structure and cash to support that.
So count me in as a supporter of MMP, since without them, I don't think there is ASL as we know it. They aren't perfect, but have managed to keep the boat moving and even bring in some new players. We could do a lot worse. A heck of a lot worse.
hex