One of the brands Hasbro is making a big push with in 2016 is Yo-kai Watch. It’s based on a Japanese anime series that’s centered on the story of a young boy, his magical watch, and the yokai (mythological ghosts and spirits) that he summons with it to solve mysteries and do good deeds. Of course, with Hasbro part of that push had to be Yo-kai Watch games.

In the fall, Hasbro will launch a Yo-kai Watch Trading Card Game. A starter pack ($13) will include 40 cards, a play mat, and one exclusive Yo-kai Watch medal (collectible discs that fit in the replica watches also for sale). Blind booster packs will include 10 randomized cards for $4. And a collection box exclusive to Walmart will retail for $20 and come with four booster packs and one exclusive medal.

Before the TCG, though, this spring will see release of a Yo-kai Watch The Game of Life ($20), and already hitting retail is a Yo-kai Watch Monopoly Junior ($15). Player tokens in the Monopoly game represent the yokai Komojiro, Whisper, Jibanyan, and Komasan.

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Magic: The Gathering has been supplanted by Nerf as Hasbro’s largest brand. That news was revealed Monday by CEO Brian Goldner in the company’s 2015 earnings conference call. Nevertheless, Goldner also stated that Battle for Zendikar was the game’s most successful set launch yet.

Growth in Monopoly and Magic: The Gathering contributed to the 8 percent increase in the games category, absent FX. Magic had a very good fourth quarter with the release of Battle for Zendikar, which had the strongest start to a set in the brand’s history. In addition to higher revenues in our franchise brands and several other Hasbro gaming brands, Pie Face was a clear winner this holiday season and continues to be in high demand at retail. It was recently named Toy of the Year in the U.K. You’ll learn more about the next innovation for Pie Face later this week at Toy Fair.

The Magic Digital Next platform, which we first got a hint of in November, was said to be launching in 2017, and additional Magic initiatives to be announced at Toy Fair later this week.

With the potential of a Mattel merger recently in the news, Goldner offered this assessment:

We’re focused on executing our brand blueprint strategy… [though we] continue to remain open to ideas that enhance our strategic brand blueprint and the strategy that we’re executing. But we’re very focused on executing our own strategy.

Overall, Hasbro finished 2015 with a very strong performance. Year-to-year fourth quarter revenues grew 13 percent, or 23 percent before the impact of foreign exchange. Full-year revenues for 2015 were $4.4 billion and net earnings $451.8 million. That’s revenues 4 percent higher than 2014, or 13 percent higher without the foreign exchange impact.

Hasbro’s fourth quarter revenues in the games category were 18 percent higher than the previous year. For the full year, games grew 8 percent. (Both of these again representing numbers absent foreign exchange.) In comparison, the boys category grew 30 percent and the preschool category 28 percent, while the girls category shrunk 13 percent.

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Just launched is Sword Coast Legends, a Dungeons & Dragons video RPG available for PS4 consoles and PC or Mac via Steam. Based on D&D’s 5th Edition rules and set in the Forgotten Realms, Sword Coast Legends features a Dungeon Master Mode, which allows a user to not only create new adventures but also to adjust them in real time in response to player actions.

The Exodus: Proxima Centauri Companion app (iOS) will calculate costs for working through the technology tree, plot fleet movement, and roll dice. Not yet but soon, it’ll provide a victory point calculation tool as well.

Another new companion app available on iOS devices substitutes for the Crossroads deck in Plaid Hat Games’ Dead of Winter. The app, though, forces the players to decide on which actions to take without the benefit of advance knowledge of the results.

A recent update to Sentinels of the Multiverse for iOS adds support for online cross-platform multiplayer games. There’s also now a free learn-to-play edition of the game (with limited content, of course) available for both iOS and Android.

Monopoly and Yahtzee join Catch Phrase as Hasbro games playable via Chromecast.

Family Fun Board Games’ The Postal Game is now available to download for PC or Mac, as an online browser game, for iOS, and for Android.

The City expansion for Talisman: Digital Edition adds a new region, six characters, 82 city cards, and three alternative ending cards.

Another classic, Titan, previously available for iOS, is now also available for Android.

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Hasbro reported this week third-quarter net revenues flat compared to last year, though before impact of foreign exchange, the result was actually an increase of 9 percent. The strongest performers were the boys and preschool categories, which grew 24 percent and 17 percent respectively, while games shrunk by 8 percent and girls dropped 28 percent.

Hasbro’s boys category was given a big boost by the launch of Star Wars: The Force Awakens products. NERF and Jurassic World products also supported growth in this category.

Among games, Monopoly and Magic: The Gathering were standout successes, the latter with its biggest summer release ever in the Origins set and best-attended prerelease event with Battle for Zendikar. Magic revenues in the first 9 months of 2015 were up again compared to 2014.

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Nicolò Falcone of Venice, Italy won the 2015 Monopoly World Championship in Macao. His prize was US$20,580, an amount equivalent to the bank in a standard Monopoly game. Sponsored by Hasbro, the tournament brought together 27 winners of national and regional Monopoly competitions. In the final game, Falcone played with the race car token against Tsutomu Doita of Japan, Brian Valentine of the United States, and reigning Monopoly World Champion, Bjørn Halvard Knappskog of Norway. At one point in the game, a multi-player trade gave each a property color set.

The Pentamind World Championship, an event of the Mind Sports Olympiad, seeks to find the best all-around game player in the world. Players score “pentamind points” based on their rank in each game played and the player with the most points from their best-five games is declared the champion. That person at the 2015 event, August 23-31 in London, was James Hepell, who also won the Diving Chess World Championship.

At the 2015 Electric Football Championships in Richmond, Virginia there were events for kids, novices, experienced players, and members of the Miniature Football Coaches Association. The winner of the Legends Tournament was Darrel Smith.

The final game of the French Subbuteo Open saw brothers Mongi and Fayçal Rouis play to a tie, broken only by Fayçal in a shoot-out.

Roman Strakhov solved the 5×5 Rubik’s Cube blindfolded in a world-record 5 minutes, 18.65 seconds.

Levon Aronian of Armenia won the Sinquefield Cup in St. Louis, claiming its $75,000 top prize. The Sinquefield Cup is the second leg of the Grand Chess Tour.

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Friday marked the launch of a new crop of Star Wars toys. Based on the upcoming movie, The Force Awakens, these included lightsabers, action figures, animatronic characters, and programmable rolling droids. But what about the games?

Don’t worry! Hasbro’s got you covered…

Of course, there’s the obligatory The Force Awakens version of Star Wars Monopoly. It has a round board and replaces purchasing properties with establishing bases on planets (Coruscant, Endor, Tatooine, Hoth, and others). Player tokens in this version are miniature figures of Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, Finn, and Kylo Ren.

Then there’s the game everyone’s been excited about since we first got a peek at it back in April, Risk: Star Wars Edition. Not only is the board in the shape of a TIE fighter, the game comes with over 100 miniature space ships—X-wings, Y-wings, B-wings, and TIE fighters. Game play involves two opposing teams battling on three fronts—the Death Star, the shield assault, and the personal confrontation of Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader.

Another one that looks like fun is Loopin’ Chewie. This one’s a dexterity game where the goal is to protect your storm troopers from being knocked off by a flying Millennium Falcon.

Back with strategy games, we have Star Wars Chess. The game’s the same but on one side the figures are Imperial characters and on the other side they’re Rebel characters. To help with identification, the base of each has an image of the matching traditional Chess piece.

In Star Wars Battleship one person plays with the Tantive IV, Millennium Falcon, X-wing fighters, and A-wing fighters, the other with the Finalizer, Imperial shuttle, Slave I, and First Order Special Forces TIE Fighters.

Star Wars Duels is a card game based on War. However, when played by more than two, individuals can team up to combine the strength of their cards.

For a younger crowd there’s Star Wars Hands Down. The goal with this one is to get rid of all one’s cards by being the first to slam down the card matching the image on a spinner.

And finally, there’s the word-guessing game, Star Wars Catch Phrase. Of course, the words are all from Star Wars and the electronics are housed in a little Millennium Falcon.

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So much licensed game news has crossed my desk recently…

R. Talsorian Games has reached an agreement with CD Projekt Red for The Witcher Role-Playing Game. It’ll be based on the same rules system as Cyberpunk 2020 and is planned for mid-2016.

Two Dark Horse Comics series, The Goon and Fear Agent, are getting the Savage Worlds treatment from Pinnacle Entertainment. Also expect to see an official Savage Worlds Flash Gordon.

Star Trek board games are coming from Gale Force 9 next summer.

There’s going to be anniversary editions of Thunderbirds Monopoly and Back to the Future Monopoly.

From Upper Deck expect in 2016 a Big Trouble in Little China Legendary game. It’s the film’s 30th anniversary.

MegaCon Games is making The Banner Saga: Warbands, a cooperative miniatures game based on the computer RPG from Stoic.

The 1960s era Captain Action Card Game is making a return.

Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment is getting a board game adaptation. Unfortunately, it’s planned just as a roll-and-move trivia game.

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Under pressure by foreign exchange rates, Hasbro’s second quarter net revenues were down 4 percent compared to last year (to $797.7 million). The results, however, were better than expected by analysts, moving the company’s stock price to close up 6 percent on Monday.

Before the impact of foreign exchange, Hasbro’s revenues were up 5 percent. The girls category dropped 22 percent compared to the same quarter of last year, games 6 percent. However, when comparing the first 6 months of 2015 to that of 2014, the games category was flat. This difference was driven mostly by the change in Magic: The Gathering’s release schedule. In 2014 the major release was in the second quarter. In 2015 it was in the first. A “restaging” of Duel Masters in Japan was also a contributing factor.

Results in the second quarter were mixed among Hasbro’s franchise brands as well. Magic: The Gathering, Transformers, and Furby were down. Littlest Pet Shop, Monopoly, My Little Pony, Nerf, and Play-Doh were up. So were Marvel and Jurassic World.

CEO Brian Goldner said traditional board games in particular were up “a bit” in the second quarter. In addition to Monopoly, Clue, Trouble, and Twister performed well.

Looking forward, Goldner spoke optimistically about Monopoly Here and Now, Pie Face, games for the Minions and Star Wars movies, and the…

Magic: The Gathering Arena of the Planeswalkers game, which gives us a new footprint in the strategy board gaming category.

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A planned Monopoly movie is a story Purple Pawn’s been covering for more than 7 years. Hasbro first signed with Universal Pictures, who brought on Ridley Scott to direct. Eventually the project moved on to Emmett/Furla Oasis Films. Now we learn from Hasbro that Monopoly will be produced jointly with Lionsgate.

In keeping with a game that has brought so many hours of joy to so many for so long, MONOPOLY will be a film for all ages, visually sumptuous, heartwarming, and full of action and adventure. The story centers on a boy from Baltic Avenue who uses both Chance and Community in a quest to make his fortune, taking him on a fun, adventure-filled journey. It’s about making your own luck, what makes you truly rich and, of course, avoiding Jail time!

To write the screenplay for this brilliant play on words, Hasbro and Lionsgate have recruited Andrew Niccol (The Truman Show, Gattaca, The Terminal).

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Ah, Dubai. The city of wealth, luxury and exoticism. As soon as you step inside one of the malls, you will immediately be embraced by the amazing atmosphere of its golden steroids. And now you can indulge in another one-of-a-kind experience – a game of Monopoly, in real life size.

To celebrate the game’s 80th anniversary, the Mall of the Emirates has installed a huge Monopoly board marked with iconic locations in Dubai on the ground floor of the property. Along with live commentary by a real Mr. Monopoly, participating players can walk on the board with huge game pieces, roll the gigantic dices, and – if unlucky enough – be locked into the barred jail. According to the mall’s spokesperson, money raised from this instalment will be sent to Nepal for house-building purpose.

Check out the video from Business Insider.

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