Magic: The Gathering's Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty came to market strong in February 2022. This is the first Standard set in a long while that was an all-star for sales, despite not toppling Pokemon TCG for the top slot on the charts. This set, more or less, had it all going on as far as what Magic players look for in a Standard set, which includes having playable cards across several formats, a captivating theme, and stunning artwork. However, the true attraction for Magic enthusiasts to this set was likely the valuable parallels randomly inserted into the Collectors Packs.
In essence, Kamigawa Neon Dynasty's sales performance has more or less provided the answer to a question WotC has been grappling with as far as design goes: "Should they include ultra rare chase cards in Magic sets or not, and how?" WotC first experimented with these ultra rare chase cards in Kaladesh with Inventions (see "Major Plans "), which were a huge success. However, they moved away from this product model, circa Hour of Devastation, and later, dove into offering different product types with more chase cards, such as Collectors Packs and Set Boosters.
They then went on to experiment with adding different parallels to sets, starting with the different artwork versions of Teferi offered in Core Set 2021 (see "'Magic: The Gathering' 'Core Set 2021'"). When Collectors Boxes started to fall flat 2021, they moved to adding parallels with different rarities to their products in Kamigawa Neon Dynasty (see "Parallels to 'Magic: The Gathering' "). This set seems to have struck a decent balance between collectability, value, and playability for players and collectors alike, and it will be interesting to see where WotC goes from here with parallels and chase cards.
