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

[drothgery]

I realize there are a number of folks who haven't seen the actual numbers (or at least not in a good long time) who've postulated that 3.5 could not have outsold 3.0. And I guess you can put me in the ranks of fool, but I for one will take a posteriori knowledge over a priori knowledge any day...at least when it comes to sales numbers.

FWIW, I'd've been seriously shocked if 3.5 didn't outsell 3.0. Five years > 3 years, and the US economy was in much better shape from 2003-2008 than from 2000-2003 (no, really, you can look it up).

 

[malraux]

Dig through some Hasbro quarterly reports. The information is in there somewhere.

WotC as a whole rates a line in the 10-q and 10-ks. No idea if there's a more detailed breakdown elsewhere, but it ain't in the quarterly reports.

 

[Mark]

We made the books our customers (stores) told us to make based on their orders. We knew it would be huge, told them it would be huge, and even made more books than they demanded because we knew it would be huge but...

I have to say many stores doubted us. I saw orders from core hobby stores like 2 PHB, 1 DMG, and 1 MM ??? These order wouldn't even cover a manager or employee order let alone customer demand.

The good news is we have more books in our warehouse (loose PHB, DMG, MM) with more on the way including gift sets. I am sure the phones will be ringing off the hook in our sales dept come Monday and our warehouse will be shipping overnight like mad.

I am sorry if you are frustrated about not getting books yet. Shorting the market would not be a good model for us and we don't do that, we want you playing, we want to sell books.

Hang in there help in the form of more books are on the way!

Was there a problem with not recognizing what the gift set demand would be and not printing up enough gift set sleeves? I don't believe there was a time when a gift set was offered at the same time as the initial books, either, right?

 

[Obrysii]

We made the books our customers (stores) told us to make based on their orders. We knew it would be huge, told them it would be huge, and even made more books than they demanded because we knew it would be huge but...

Of course, the initial release will be huge - but I would not expect, once it has reached a saturation point (ie, those people who will play 4e), the demand will decrease sharply.

I think the reason many stores did not order many is simply the lackluster response amongst their consumers. At least where I lived, the response was decidedly negative or at best disinterested neutral - The "Eh, I'll look into it," sort of thing. This would explain the low requests.

 

[korjik]

Inital weekend and inital print run sales are pretty irrelevant. I will be more impressed if next years core releases still have some zing to them.

You almost have to assume that the edition inital release will do well. Most gamers may grumble, but they are honest enough to actually get the full rules set before they pass judgement.

I have never thought well of 4e, but I still went out and got the three books friday evening anyway.

The thing is, am I, and are the people like me, going to buy any more product? If the answer ends up being a resounding no, then 4e fails, even if the initial core release outsells all other products combined.

 

[crosswiredmind]

It is amazing to see the reaction from the doubters - it won't sell, um, err, it won't sell out, oh, um, it won't need another print run this year, oh, it did?, ok, well it won't keep selling and the people that bought it will all hate it ... etc.

Like it or not 4e is doing well. Congrats to WotC!

 

[Mark]

It is amazing to see the reaction from the doubters - it won't sell, um, err, it won't sell out, oh, um, it won't need another print run this year, oh, it did?, ok, well it won't keep selling and the people that bought it will all hate it ... etc.

Oh, let's not paint everyone curiously asking questions with that broad brush. Personally, I am noticing some doubt because there seems to be plenty of actual books available, just not the gift sets. Seems like the sleeves/slip covers are in short supply. Seems like a lot of folks who might have been interested in just getting two of the books, mostly the PH/MM combo people (though I suppose there are some PH/DMG people, too) figured the early bird specials on getting all three were too good to pass up. Naturally, if you are getting all three, going for the gift set was the obvious choice.

Anyway, the Amazon bestseller lists seems to bear this out to some degree but it will be interesting to see what WotC does to rectify the imbalance. Making slip covers available to retailers might be one solution. Hopefully the brick and mortar FLGSs were not unable to do well with sales of the new edition due to increased competition from online deep discounters, big box stores and retail bookstores. I know not everyone has a good FLGS in their area but those who do know how valuable they can be to their gaming.

Like it or not 4e is doing well. Congrats to WotC!

I think anyone who is a gamer knows that success for WotC's flagship RPG is a good thing for the industry as a whole. It creates positive buzz that permeates through all levels and tiers of the gaming industry.