The Magic: The Gathering community has been quite vocal about how widespread Universes Beyond sets have become. While crossover with popular IPs is always neat, things started to turn around when Wizards of the Coast announced that the Universes Beyond crossover sets will be legal in Standard, Modern, and Pioneer formats.
Related
Every card revealed for Magic: The Gathering's Foundations
The Basics could be an ideal starting point for anyone new to Magic: The Gathering.
Eventually, fans began to voice their concerns, fearing that Universes Beyond would take precedence over the original multiverse sets. While the Final Fantasy and SpongeBob SquarePants character sets are great, they want to see more original Wizards concepts. However, MTG lead designer Mark Rosewater assured that this will not happen.
Universes Beyond cannot replace multiple sets
“Hi Mark! How are the Magic IP kits selling compared to the UB ones? I fear the success of the UB will lead to fewer Magic IP products,” he asked on the Rosewater blog.
“Universes Beyond sets sell better on average (there's a lot of power in tapping popular properties), but multiverse magic sets are important to Wizards as a business for a number of reasons,” Rosewater explained, listing the reasons.
First, he mentioned that it takes a lot of time to conceptualize, collaborate, and publish Universes Beyond sets. Each step takes a lot of time to get approval from the IP owner, resulting in these sets taking a year longer to release than their multi-version counterparts. Meanwhile, Wizards can take full creative control over their own sets without answering to a third party.
That said, when it comes to long-term planning, Wizards relies on multi-version sets for a lot of its output. While Universes Beyond can take a lot of time, kits in the multiverse can be sent at will, plugging any holes in the launch cycle. This again shows that society is highly dependent on them.
Licensing costs are another factor that doesn't apply to in-multiverse sets, but more importantly, Wizards is taking steps to grow the Magic brand itself. “The Magic brand is bigger than a card game. The upcoming Netflix show is an example of that. Every time we do a multiverse set, we grow that brand. There's business equity (aka creating something that gains value over time) in creating our own creative,” explained Rosewater .
As for features and mechanics, Wizards can always change them and adjust the balance to better suit the needs of the game in multiverse sets, but with Universes Beyond sets it's much harder to do because of all the approvals required at every step. .
Finally, Rosewater mentioned looking at people, saying, “Making multiversal Magic sets is very satisfying creatively, and the people who make Magic want to make them.”
Other
Everything Just Announced for Magic: The Gathering's “Next Era”
Final Fantasy, SpongeBob SquarePants, new rules and rotation changes are all coming to Magic: The Gathering very soon.
