farbsman:
Actually the reason why Yu-gi-oh and Upper Deck pays royalties to Wizards is because Yu-gi-oh is, in every legal sense, based on
Magic: the Gathering. As in that Upper Deck pays Wizards royalties for using Magic elements in the game.
... Anyone who's played Magic and Yu-gi-oh will notice the similarities. And anyone who's kept tabs on the Yu-gi-oh franchise may be familiar with Yu-gi-oh's creator's particular fondness of
Magic: the Gathering.
Just one knot in the tangle my friend. Does anyone remember when the first set - Expedition - was "delayed"? Turns out that WotC and Nintendo were jointly working on the set to implement the dot code technology - something about the printing if I remember correctly.
How could I forget? More so, I did find it odd that there were English Expedition cards made by a non-Wizards source (remember that Gastly card that was hot a while back?). This is kinda when I began to suspect things were amiss between Wizards and Nintendo, but never paid much attention to it.
.... Now it is my opinion that Nintendo intended on running the card game from day one, but didn't know how to. So Nintendo got some sucker (Wizards) to teach them how to produce cardboard cards, or at least give them enough info to eventually jump ship and produce their own cards. Lord knows if I was running a corporation, the more internalized I could get things, the better it would be for my company. And if I want to product something but can't, I'd either learn from a friend-corporation, research it myself, or buy out someone who knows how.
With that said.... I wouldn't be surprized if Nintendo intended to buy Wizards of the Coasts while Wizards was still independant. However Hasbro got to them before Nintendo, so they shifted their goals to just learn from Wizards then jump ship.
... There's obviously WAY more to this than any of us could figure out. (Mind you these are all my own guesstimations, none of this has been secret info given to me by "my sources".)