4E Out-Selling Any Previous Edition. Good? Bad.

Look, I'm happy the design and development direction of 4E has attracted an unheralded customer base. I'm hopeful some of those customers are new gamers or gamers from 1E who are returning to the fold (like myself). Every indication is that it's a huge success on many levels. Great.

But...and this is a big "but"...shouldn't we have been better prepared to handle the demand? Amazon, in particular, has known pre-orders for some time. How can it be out?

I went to four different bookstores today in my area. Sold out. Sold out. Sold out. Sold out. And these are with significant numbers previously ordered (comparable to the size of the store and past D&D demand).

Did someone screw up? How can the demand so quickly and so emphatically out-race supply? Isn't that Economics 101?

A second printing before the release date? Again, that's great for our hobby. But doesn't that point to some pretty bad estimates going into this thing?

I hope we (and by 'we' I mean - WotC) learns it's lesson from this and does a better job of giving the community what it wants, when it wants, in the future. While there certainly won't be the number of sales for subsequent books (splat book volumes supposedly suck when compared to core book orders), I'd hope there's a better estimation process in place.

Ah well...I guess it's better than if sales were the same as 3E or what-not. But it's still upsetting.

End whine.

Wis

Maybe we should start calling them "Wii"zards of the coast.

Wisdom Penalty said:

But...and this is a big "but"...shouldn't we have been better prepared to handle the demand? Amazon, in particular, has known pre-orders for some time. How can it be out?

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They might just have prepared for the amount of demand that they had been interacting with during the development: The 3E Grognards, the Internet Reactionaries, the splintered and self-selecting vocal minorities.

In reality, an announcement of 4E reached the ears of people who wanted it, and they purchased the game at a clip unforeseen, for they were unheard of.

It helps when a substantinal barrier to entry we call "System Mastery" and "Optimized Character Creation" is broken down. Even if there is a System Mastery component to the game, people purchase the game now because they trust that they are on a level playing field.

Shrug. This is a very hard thing to do. I've worked for quite a few big companies, and I doubt Hasbro is much different. The WOTC marketeers could wave all of the pre-orders and survey results in front of the execs that they wanted, and any requests to increase the size of the initial print run probably would be shot down. The downside of printing too few is that a few sales are lost, and a lot delayed, if the forecasts are right. The downside of printing too many is that you end up wasting a whole lot of money and end up with warehouses full of unsold product if the forecasts are wrong. And if the forecasts were really showing that much more demand than was historical for the product line, those execs will be very skeptical. They want actual sales numbers, not forecasts, before they risk too much money.

I would like to dig up some of the threads complaining about WOTC's terrible marketing strategy for this game that were posted to these boards about six months ago. Just to point and laugh.

I would be amazed if this edition will outsell red box back in the 80's. It will have to reach FAD like proportions again... fingers crossed though eh.

Maybe they kept the initial print run small opting for some kind of limited release strategy kind of like Wii. Perhaps by underestimating demand they can point to the sell out success of 4e? It's rarity only makes it more coveted and seem more successful feeding the hype machine. In Aus it doesn't seem that big a deal, there is plenty of stock at the moment.

Either that or they have no idea what they are doing (which I doubt, Scott and Co. are smart cookies).

Using rarity to drive demand is only a good idea if you can also float the price.

As James Mishler points out, it's interesting that sales of 4.0e are being compared to 3.5e and not 3.0e. Also, the numbers being considered are what shops are ordering, not what is available to the general public. It is not difficult to get a copy of 4e online as far as I can tell, even if a number of brick and mortar stores didn't order in enough copies. I have heard of at least one shop that has so far sold a grand total of 1 copy: Anecdote

I'm not sure if it really is outselling previous editions of DnD, Sure there may be more copies on book shelves at the big name stores, but when I got picked up my order from Barnes and Noble today their Dungeons and Dragon's 4e display looked untouched and they had several slots filled with 4e books on the circular display rack they used for DnD books.

I'd wait till WoTC gives out their official quarterly sales figures before calling it a success because if more than half of those books I saw today end up being returned, then sadly the book flopped in at least one market.

Everyone I know who ordered from Amazon had their order delayed, including myself.

I cancelled my Amazon order and went to my FLGS. The place was packed with gamers playing D&D 4e in the gaming area. I spoke to the owner a little bit and he said that 4e was selling like crazy. Some of the best sales they had in a long time.

Interestingly enough, he also said that they have even been selling 3e stuff pretty well too. He theorized thats because all the other gamestores in the area have discontinued it, but he said he is making a lot of money on both editions right now.

Wisdom Penalty said:

Did someone screw up? How can the demand so quickly and so emphatically out-race supply? Isn't that Economics 101?

Click to expand...

Maybe they just spent too much time on internet messageboards, where 4E was decried as a crime against gamerdom. Or something.

Non-snarkily, demand for a new product is extremely difficult to estimate with any degree of confidence. So they went conservative, and were pleasantly surprised. Can't say I would have done it any differently.

It's not Economics 101. It's more like Advanced Marketing 417.