I have a sales question. LOTR, I believe, is the best selling set of all time, right? And if I recall, the best selling commander set of all time is Fallout, behind that being Warhammer. Goes to imply the Marvel sets will likely be the next highest selling sets of all time, if not just behind LOTR. My question is, doesn't this show WOTC should mostly just pivot to UB as the new 'standard' with old planes as the less visited product?
While will continue to do Universes Beyond as there is an obvious audience, but the Magic in-universe sets (which we call “MIP sets”) also serve an important function. There are a lot of fans who love Magic’s IP, and having sets that we have don’t have to interface with outside partners has a lot of advantages.
IMO I think we ultimately see 3 UB sets per year, 3 "in universe" i.e. Magic sets per year, and 2 Horizons/Remastered type sets per year. You can't really pump a set shorter than 6 weeks, and it seems like 8 or 9 sets is the upper bound on what they can release each year.