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State of Mongoose 2008... with an interesting note about 4th edition
Taken from State of the Mongoose 2008:
------------------------------------------------------ Dungeons & Dragons 4e
The fourth edition is something of an odd duck for us, and it is no secret that sales thus far have been somewhat behind those for third edition. The game itself is very different from its predecessors.
------------------------------------------------------
From what I've read on ENWorld, I thought 4th edition was selling like hotcakes. This note seems to support what I've been seeing in with my local geeks... that 4th edition isn't doing as well as WotC would have hoped.
I personally wouldn't take anything Mongoose has to say about thier own 4E products not so great sales as indicative of WOTC's sales of 4E. I mean what have they put out for 4E so far ? Some strange commando game based on it?
I dont think that Mongooses rep is all that good considering all the drivel they put out in 3.0's heyday. I've avoided the new Runequest, Traveller, and Conan games because of a few lame 3.X products I've owned and a multitude of reviews of "shoddy work" (editing, poor binding, general "broken-ness", power creep, etc etc)
That not to say I believe 4E is totally kicking @$$ and taking names, but rather that I think someone like Joe Goodman would have a far better grasp on such things than mongoose based on the quality, style, and amount of products they produce for 4E.
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I believe that the statement you quote above is referring to Mongoose's own 4e products, such as Quintesstial Wizard, not any WotC products. While I've heard many anecdotal statements about 4e's sales at brick and mortar stores on both extremes, I don't see any reason to doubt direct statements from Mearls that sales have been very good. They've had to go to core book reprinting pretty quickly, as I recall. We won't have any really reliable data on the sales of the major supplements for some time, if ever, IMO.
Also, it may be working just fine for WotC. So don't take one publisher's statement as a view of the "health" of the entire edition as a whole.
Edit: Ninjaed by all you faster typers! :-P
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The market environment isn't quite the same as the release of 3e for 3rd party publishers though. It seemed to me that 3rd party products (with the exception of Paizo) lost a lot of steam after 3.5 came out.
Especially since WotC is heavily previewing its upcoming supplements, there's less demand for competing 3pp available now.
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I think being a third party publisher this way around is a lot more difficult, because WotC aren't leaving any gaping holes in their own lineup.
They are supplying adventures, rules, splats, campaign books, tiles, what have you. So I think most sales of 4e stuff are WotC books, and that 3rd parties will have a more difficult time selling their alternatives in the market.
/M
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Also, Dragon Magazine (the actual magazine, that is), in the Paizo era, advertised a *lot* of d20 and OGL 3rd party products, IIRC. That must have helped sales, to whatever degree.
The situation there is rather different as well. I wonder where Mongoose (and others) advertise now. . .
I agree its most likely Mongoose's own 4E sales hurting.
Then again I know darn well that WOTC and every employee of WOTC will put everything in the most positive light they can.
I can name a bunch of banks who were saying similar positive comments about their business until a few months ago.
The whole reason you cannot find hard numbers is simply because they don't want you to know whether they are telling you the truth or are "embellishing" the story.
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Then again I know darn well that WOTC and every employee of WOTC will put everything in the most positive light they can.
They're a business, so that's a standard assumption; it's not just WotC being especially shady or anything. Of course the lack of any more such glowing statements for the most part since the core books came out might be more telling for its long-term success. Or for instance the German publisher of WotC's 4e books, Feder & Schwert, just announced the other day that they'll be dropping the line after the core three books. Plenty of stuff people can read into if they want, and likewise some folks will find a way to make any potential bad news into a glowing endorsement of WotC.
But unless the company sells the IP or goes belly up, I rather doubt that we'll ever see hard sales figures for anyone in the know. So all there is, is speculation. And online opinion warring is so much more rife as a result.
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The market environment isn't quite the same as the release of 3e for 3rd party publishers though. It seemed to me that 3rd party products (with the exception of Paizo) lost a lot of steam after 3.5 came out.
Not only is the climate different for 3rd party publishers, but the US is also in a recession at the moment. 3e was released around the height of the dot com bubble.
Well, "behind third edition" doesn't mean "poor", and more than "a bit less than Bill Gates" means "poverty".
Not only that, isn't Wraith Recon their only release? How can you call 4e an odd duck, when your product line consists of one book? And if you ask me, Wraith Recon doesn't seem like a mass appeal product. I'm not knocking it or anything like that, but I still don't have any idea what it is or what its trying to accomplish, and that isn't from a lack of trying either...
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Totally off topic, but, along the lines of wanting some numbers.
A number I would LOVE to see, and one they could release, is the number of subscribers for the DDI. There's no laws preventing them from telling us how many signed up for that. And, IMO, that is the biggest indication of the longevity of 4e.
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Totally off topic, but, along the lines of wanting some numbers.
A number I would LOVE to see, and one they could release, is the number of subscribers for the DDI. There's no laws preventing them from telling us how many signed up for that. And, IMO, that is the biggest indication of the longevity of 4e.
Not sure if they can do that either. It's a HASBRO policy if I remember correctly, to not discuss specific numbers.
Also I know anecdotally the DDI has changed my purcchasing habbits a bit.
Taken from State of the Mongoose 2008:
------------------------------------------------------ Dungeons & Dragons 4e
The fourth edition is something of an odd duck for us, and it is no secret that sales thus far have been somewhat behind those for third edition. The game itself is very different from its predecessors.
------------------------------------------------------
From what I've read on ENWorld, I thought 4th edition was selling like hotcakes. This note seems to support what I've been seeing in with my local geeks... that 4th edition isn't doing as well as WotC would have hoped.
Well, certainly the 3PP industry is less excited now than they were when 3.0 was released because the OGL was such a radical change from T$R. Everyone (publishers and players in the know) were excited about the potential and possibilites. Now, it's a wary eye toward the GSL for many, and the industry is mixed on its 4E excitement to say the least.
Still, I think it's *way* too early to label 4E as anything other than a success for WotC so far.
Unless they sell advertising through the DDI in some manner, there is no reason for WotC openly discuss subscription numbers. Weren't the magazines brought back in-house, in part, to limit the amount of competition D&D faced in the marketplace by removing their traditional mouthpiece from being used to herald the competition? I suppose they could sell advertising through the DDI and not base it on subscription numbers, and some publishers would still be likely to want that exposure.
Not sure if they can do that either. It's a HASBRO policy if I remember correctly, to not discuss specific numbers.
Its probably a bit more than just a HAS policy. It likely relates to both an internal decision and SEC based regulations.
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