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another rpg industry doomsday article (merged: all 3 "Mishler Rant" threads)
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<blockquote data-quote="kenmarable" data-source="post: 4867636" data-attributes="member: 40359"><p>Exactly. I know I'm making a logical leap here, but if Paizo and Green Ronin have stable PDF to print ratios over the past 2-3 years, I'm thinking they are probably happy with the PDF sales. Now "being happy with PDF sales" is of course really fuzzy. But in lieu of actual sales and production data, I'm thinking the simplest explanation is that they are doing fine with PDF sales and people are buying them at that price. Of course their print products are the real money makers, which brings up the additional point that predicting a trend in PDF prices based even just on PDFs of products in print may also be flawed. I haven't seen an argument to convince me that if a PDF copy of a print book goes down in value, that all PDF-only products would be dragged down as well. </p><p></p><p>And as for people claiming that PDFs are worthless to them, that's irrelevant. 4e products are worthless to people who don't play the game. Pathfinder products are useless to my parents who have never played an RPG. If something has no value to a consumer, then they don't really have any relevant say in determining the price, in my opinion.</p><p></p><p>Of course, I don't want to spend too much time defending PDFs since I think they are a dead end format and will be gone from the RPG industry in 5 years. (Ok, 5 may be pushing it since they are so easy to produce, but definitely within 10 years.) But that's just me.</p><p></p><p>I just think even a single Loss Leader product won't cause this Race to Zero for the entire PDF market. In fact, if consumers were going to start demanding that more products be closer to the 20% PDF/Print ratio, we would have been hearing it sometime since the price was announced (since we're talking decreasing the perceived value of PDFs, knowing the PF RPG price should be enough to at least begin this collapse of PDF pricing). I don't see the devaluing happening yet. Maybe we're just slow and in August or September the Race to Zero will be demanded. However, I'm thinking people are very happy with the price on that one product, but aren't seeing it as entitlement to demand lower prices on all PDF products. It's simply not happening.</p><p></p><p></p><p>But that quote refers to stockpiling products. As I understand it, buying a ton now so I don't have to buy any later (and company doing the promotion is hurt in the long run). Yeah, that is definitely a bad outcome of loss leaders. But this isn't a consumable product, it's an information product. People would no more stockpile an individual RPG book than they would Stephen King's latest novel. Once you have one, that's all you need. </p><p></p><p>I'm not sure what other indirect costs it might have. Sure, James' idea that it would devalue PDFs in consumers' minds is <strong>possible</strong>, but as I said, if we haven't seen it even start yet, I doubt it'll be that earth-shattering. I'm guessing the PDF pricing is pretty stable right now, and people see this promotion exactly for what it is - a unique, one time deal to get people interested in the new game. Part of this (and I'm jsut pulling out of my butt guessing) is that RPG PDF consumers tend to be those of us online reading these boards, reading blogs, etc. and are generally more informed. Yes, the average EN World user isn't necessarily the typical print RPG consumer, but I'm <strong>guessing</strong> that we're not far off from the typical PDF consumer.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="kenmarable, post: 4867636, member: 40359"] Exactly. I know I'm making a logical leap here, but if Paizo and Green Ronin have stable PDF to print ratios over the past 2-3 years, I'm thinking they are probably happy with the PDF sales. Now "being happy with PDF sales" is of course really fuzzy. But in lieu of actual sales and production data, I'm thinking the simplest explanation is that they are doing fine with PDF sales and people are buying them at that price. Of course their print products are the real money makers, which brings up the additional point that predicting a trend in PDF prices based even just on PDFs of products in print may also be flawed. I haven't seen an argument to convince me that if a PDF copy of a print book goes down in value, that all PDF-only products would be dragged down as well. And as for people claiming that PDFs are worthless to them, that's irrelevant. 4e products are worthless to people who don't play the game. Pathfinder products are useless to my parents who have never played an RPG. If something has no value to a consumer, then they don't really have any relevant say in determining the price, in my opinion. Of course, I don't want to spend too much time defending PDFs since I think they are a dead end format and will be gone from the RPG industry in 5 years. (Ok, 5 may be pushing it since they are so easy to produce, but definitely within 10 years.) But that's just me. I just think even a single Loss Leader product won't cause this Race to Zero for the entire PDF market. In fact, if consumers were going to start demanding that more products be closer to the 20% PDF/Print ratio, we would have been hearing it sometime since the price was announced (since we're talking decreasing the perceived value of PDFs, knowing the PF RPG price should be enough to at least begin this collapse of PDF pricing). I don't see the devaluing happening yet. Maybe we're just slow and in August or September the Race to Zero will be demanded. However, I'm thinking people are very happy with the price on that one product, but aren't seeing it as entitlement to demand lower prices on all PDF products. It's simply not happening. But that quote refers to stockpiling products. As I understand it, buying a ton now so I don't have to buy any later (and company doing the promotion is hurt in the long run). Yeah, that is definitely a bad outcome of loss leaders. But this isn't a consumable product, it's an information product. People would no more stockpile an individual RPG book than they would Stephen King's latest novel. Once you have one, that's all you need. I'm not sure what other indirect costs it might have. Sure, James' idea that it would devalue PDFs in consumers' minds is [b]possible[/b], but as I said, if we haven't seen it even start yet, I doubt it'll be that earth-shattering. I'm guessing the PDF pricing is pretty stable right now, and people see this promotion exactly for what it is - a unique, one time deal to get people interested in the new game. Part of this (and I'm jsut pulling out of my butt guessing) is that RPG PDF consumers tend to be those of us online reading these boards, reading blogs, etc. and are generally more informed. Yes, the average EN World user isn't necessarily the typical print RPG consumer, but I'm [b]guessing[/b] that we're not far off from the typical PDF consumer. [/QUOTE]
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another rpg industry doomsday article (merged: all 3 "Mishler Rant" threads)
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