Doesn't Hasbro have a strong incentive to make a "lite" version of D&D with a pared-down paperback rulebook and sell it as a casual-friendly overpriced starter kit with a bunch of dice, figures, treasure cards, etc.? It could be a strict subset of the normal 5E rules (I guess - not that knowledgeable about TTRPG design). That way they could sell you all the same books. Seems like a slam dunk
Hasbro's present marketing strategy for Dungeons & Dragons is to try to position every D&D group as potential purchasers of every D&D product. Among other things, this is one of the main reasons that every campaign setting other than the Forgotten Realms is being repackaged as a series of tourist destinations for Forgotten Realms based campaigns to visit, and why there's been a strong move away from focused, topical sourcebooks and toward big, messy "book of everything"-style anthologies that consciously avoid focusing too much on any one type of character or campaign. It's also why the core books make a lot of noise about how wonderfully modular the rules are without actually providing any meaningful modularity in practice – if the game was designed to make it easy to pick and choose modular components, they'd risk fracturing the player base into distinct subsets with different preferred sets of modules.
All this in mind, it's fairly easy to see why there's currently no official "light" version of D&D. Under the paradigm of every single D&D group as a potential purchaser of every single D&D product, a version of Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition that was actually, meaningfully simpler than the core product would function in practice as a competing game (what if people decide they like the simpler version better and just play that instead?), and the last thing you want is to compete with yourself. TSR learned that the hard way! With substantive simplification off the table, the only introductory version of Dungeons & Dragons Hasbro can offer is one with exactly the same rules which simply has less content, and tells people to buy the full version if they want more – which is exactly what they're selling in the various starter sets that are presently available.
(This perspective also makes sense of a lot of the present text's more puzzling assertions. For example, why does the text repeatedly insist that theatre-of-the-mind combat is fully supported when every single bit of mechanical content which interacts with the combat system is clearly written under the assumption that you're playing with miniature figures on a grid? It's about avoiding splitting the player base again; if two distinct modes of combat were really supported, there'd be a risk that some published material would appeal only to some groups. Perversely, Hasbro's concrete financial incentive here is to have the game's text make the broadest possible set of claims about what modes of play are supported while at the same time doing its best to channel every group into playing exactly the same game!)
I mean... they're also selling the miniature figures, so they've definitely also got a financial incentive to make sure that its as difficult as possible to play without them (while pretending that it's not so they can try to sell books to people who don't want miniatures but they hope can be entrapped into doing so)
like, isn't "to sell more minatures" the entire reason tieflings are they way they are now, with uniform appearances?
Well, yes – miniature figures are an example of a supplementary product that would appeal only to some groups if they actually allowed themselves to split the player base.
Speaking as a DM, it would be virtually impossible for me to run combat in the theatre of the mind while making use of combat mechanics like range, vision and cover without myself using a detailed map! It's hard enough running meaningfully 3D combat on a 2D map when all the minis are chocolate bits or generic goon miniatures.
In my experience, a fair number of groups end up squaring the circle regarding what the text claims to support versus what it actually supports combat-wise by concluding that "theatre of the mind" means the DM is somehow keeping a detailed combat grid in their head.
(Then they turn around and start claiming that this putative ability to keep a detailed combat grid in your head is a basic skill that every DM, even complete novices, should be expected to perform on command, and hey, we're right back at the whole "D&D's present culture of play actively exacerbates its ongoing DM shortage by encouraging DMs to burn themselves out" thing I keep harping on about.)
