So you're saying... Wizards sells prepackaged product, stores sell individual cards. Prepackaged product =/= individual cards, therefore Wizards makes no profit from individual cards?
The cards on the secondary market come from packs and wizards sells packs so in a way the strength of the secondary market is a reflection on wizards profits through pack sales.
With that said Commander is changing the current formula store owners use to crack packs for singles. If you have a 100 players that want a card for 4x magic you need to open enough packs to get 400 of that card. If you have 100 Commander players you only have to open enough packs to get 100 cards. If they are able to open just half as many packs, probably less, that will directly impact packs sold and how Wizards truly measure their success.
Because Commander is a format of the heavily enfranchised and well-connected and most people who are spending a ton of time talking about Magic on a message board - particularly in the "Commander" section of the message board - are also the heavily enfranchised and well-connected - it's easy to get a hugely skewed view of how popular the format is. It's probably more popular than any casual variant format by a huge margin, but it's a stretch to say it's taking over.
Don't get me wrong; Commander is both experiencing unprecedented levels of popularity for a variant format and still growing in popularity. It's extremely popular. It's just easy to overestimate its dominance because of who its playerbase is.
This is a fantastic point that oughtn't be glossed over. Remember, everyone, a Magic forum is NOT an accurate cross-section of the Magic-player demographic as a whole. It should not be used as a reliable measuring stick for something's popularity. EDH/Commander is very popular, yes, but of the many, many players who don't talk about Magic on the internet, and are therefore much, much less likely to have been exposed to the format before this box set. And many more will continue to ignore it. Commander is absolutely not a credible threat to "overtaking" normal Magic in casual circles as a whole.
The cards on the secondary market come from packs and wizards sells packs so in a way the strength of the secondary market is a reflection on wizards profits through pack sales.
With that said Commander is changing the current formula store owners use to crack packs for singles. If you have a 100 players that want a card for 4x magic you need to open enough packs to get 400 of that card. If you have 100 Commander players you only have to open enough packs to get 100 cards. If they are able to open just half as many packs, probably less, that will directly impact packs sold and how Wizards truly measure their success.
Edit: They are essentially decreasing demand
I would argue that, instead of there being demand for 4x sets of cards in a 60 card deck, you are seeing demand for 1x of a card for a 100 card deck, that there is almost 4x as much perceivable value in a pack. Especially when there is an entire new sect of playable cards that wizards can print that people will have demand for. Either way the argument is kind of stupid though.
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Quote from Fry, from Futurama »
It's just like the story of the grasshopper and the octopus. All year long, the grasshopper kept burying acorns for the winter, while the octopus mooched off his girlfriend and watched TV. But then the winter came and the grasshopper died and the octopus ate all his acorns. And also he got a racecar. Is any of this getting through to you?
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BRGotta Get or Get GotRB
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The cards on the secondary market come from packs and wizards sells packs so in a way the strength of the secondary market is a reflection on wizards profits through pack sales.
With that said Commander is changing the current formula store owners use to crack packs for singles. If you have a 100 players that want a card for 4x magic you need to open enough packs to get 400 of that card. If you have 100 Commander players you only have to open enough packs to get 100 cards. If they are able to open just half as many packs, probably less, that will directly impact packs sold and how Wizards truly measure their success.
Edit: They are essentially decreasing demand
This is a fantastic point that oughtn't be glossed over. Remember, everyone, a Magic forum is NOT an accurate cross-section of the Magic-player demographic as a whole. It should not be used as a reliable measuring stick for something's popularity. EDH/Commander is very popular, yes, but of the many, many players who don't talk about Magic on the internet, and are therefore much, much less likely to have been exposed to the format before this box set. And many more will continue to ignore it. Commander is absolutely not a credible threat to "overtaking" normal Magic in casual circles as a whole.
R Citizen Cane (Feldon of the Third Path)
I would argue that, instead of there being demand for 4x sets of cards in a 60 card deck, you are seeing demand for 1x of a card for a 100 card deck, that there is almost 4x as much perceivable value in a pack. Especially when there is an entire new sect of playable cards that wizards can print that people will have demand for. Either way the argument is kind of stupid though.