@evouga said in So Wizards is selling singles now?:
The obvious endgame here is for WotC to dramatically cut paper print runs (leaving just enough product for Limited), and to instead sell packs on MTGA and chase rares/mythics as singles (in both paper and digital). This reduces their manufacturing costs by something like 10-100x for future sets and as a bonus allows them to capture some of the existing secondary market by occasionally reprinting non-rotating-format staples.
(Incidentally, if you don't spot the role of the LGS in the above plan, you aren't looking closely enough at the figure squirming under the wheels of the bus.)
So not to be that guy, but someone over at WOTC had to have done some sort of SWOT analysis to determine how much this would raise the bottom line vs hurt distributors and LGS, and based on the data made the call that this would be net positive for them in the long run, even if some stores took a hit. Likewise when they decided to sell direct via Amazon and remove the MSRP. All of these are moved to bring the game more in house and not to rely on middlemen, agree with the methodology or not.
Also, WOTC has sold "singles" before. Any deck with a fixed list is basically just that, so nothing new there. I remember buying commander decks just to get True Name Nemesis, not to mention the FTV and Comiccon sets which are closer parallels except without the limited supply. Doing it direct is the big thing and that very likely hurts distributors and super huge magic shops like SSG.
Ultimately what you see as throwing LGSes under the bus is really just them being good late stage capitalists in a publicly traded company and concerning themselves with quarterly results. I concur that this probably is yet another thing that is going to erode faith in them, but the short term gains are what they are pretty much on the hook to hit. Maybe if the LGSes around the world formed some sort of union, as they do provide the labor to run the events and such that is part of the lifeblood of the game, they would have a little more say in plans like this.