Were not many of the earlier versions not motivated in part to “office political” reasons of one kind or another?
I believe 1st ed AD&D was partly developed to sever the ties the game had with Dave Arneson.
Similarly I believe 2nd ed AD&D was partly developed to sever ties to Gary Gygax, though there was work begun in the 2nd ed before Gygax was pushed out, I think Lorraine Williams saw actually releasing a new edition as a means to separate TSR further from him.
3rd ed D&D came out of WOTC’s take over of the game.
4th ed D&D (cursed be it’s name) came out of Hasbro’s take over of WOTC.
5th ed D&D came out of the abject failure of 4th ed.
5th ed is currently doing well. I don’t see woke-ism as being a strong motivator for Hasbro to invest in the development of a 6th ed. Besides, woke-ism can and is inserting itself into 5th ed just fine as it is.
I may have some of the above facts incorrect, but that’s how I recall them without going into a deep dive. The only time it seems that we got a new edition that was not tied to office politics/new owners was when we got 5th ed, and 5th ed is in far better shape than 4th ed was.
I think it’s perfectly possible that Hasbro keeps 5th ed going for many more years, with only a couple of significant releases each year to add in tweaks and gin up interest. It could be that Hasbro treats D&D development similar to how they treat games like Monopoly. Sure, there are custom versions of monopoly, but I can’t recall that Monopoly has ever been fundamentally re-designed as had happened with D&D. If 4th ed had been a success instead of a failure I think it’s possible that 4th ed could still be the current version and of the game.
If Hasbro ever sold off D&D (say to Disney with their mountains of cash) I think a new edition would almost be certain, but others have pointed out that Hasbro doesn’t sell off their IP.