Yeah, it's making me strongly consider selling my Starships of the Galaxy.
Honestly, they were already well into the point of diminishing returns. Once you get the basics out of the way, everything else gets increasingly optional. I'd say the must-haves (apart from the core book) are taken care of by the Starships and Threats books - and the former moreso than the latter. Important ones from there might be the Scoundrel guide, the Droid book, and maybe Force Unleashed for the extra force stuff. And then you have some awesome stuff left - like the KotOR sourcebook - but you're still looking at niche books.
At some point, I'm sure they did the math. "Well, this license is expensive, and we're reaching the long tail of supplement ideas... I doubt we can sell enough copies of
Han Solo's Guide to Light Freighters to recoup the costs..."
-O
Your very first comment tends to refute the rest of your post.
well, partly refute anyway
You have sort of hit upon what I think WOTCs problem with the SW license is: Expense.
I figure that the license has to be very expensive, relatively speaking. When WOTC bought the license, it was just after the special edition releases and just before the prequel releases (IIRC). That was the high point of the license seller's market. WOTC prolly figured that after the preqels came out, everyone would be SW mad and buy the game. The abominations that were released, plus the increases in costs to produce the books has pushed the costs so that I would bet they dont make much off
any book, including the core.
Heck just compare the SAGA book to the 1e revised book. The old one is like 3 times the mass...
I disagree that SAGA is at the point of diminishing returns tho. The overinflated prices for out of print books clearly shows a demand exists. Add in
Clone wars, the upcoming new cartoon show, and the still mythological live action show, plus the video games, plus all the books and comic books, and you have alot of ways to increase demand.
Heck, I think one commercial during
Clone Wars would prolly do more to get more players into gaming that all of the Essentials line will.
So, I think it was only the business side that killed the game, not anything to do with the game ageing. RPGs are low margin, Licensed RPGs are pretty much no margin. Expensive License RPGS are money losers except in perfect conditions.