D&D 5E What D&D Beyond should have been.
Maggan
Writer for CY_BORG, Forbidden Lands and Dragonbane
What I'm thinking is that WotC wants to keep the PH, DMG and MM, and other digital books priced at about the same price as the physical books. My guess for why this is, is so that the digital books don't push the value of the physical books down, that is that people start expecting to pay less for the physical books.
When D&D3 was released they priced the core books at 20 dollars each. I don't remember when or if they managed to raise the prices later, but I remember the discussions about the price of the corresponding 3.5 books, and questions as to why they were more expensive.
So, this might be one explanation as to the prices of DnD Beyond, is basically my point.
/M
Ovinomancer
No flips for you!
Only if you fundamentally misunderstand the economic realities in play.
Let's say Curse does decide, contrary to all self-interest, to go bankrupt offering PHBs on their service for $1. They lose money hand over fist, sell a bunch of subscriptions to their service, and then fold. Everyone that bought that PHB for a $1 just lost all access to it, because it was tied to the service platform that just folded. WotC made a bunch of money (or, more likely, is recovering it from Curse's owners in a lawsuit since Curse bombed and is bankrupt) because the sell through rate at $1 was incredible. They can try again with a different licensee, who will hopefully not be suicidal in business, at a higher price point. Everyone that bought a PHB from Curse now doesn't have it, so the value of those purchases is both worthless and not going to affect future sales.
What would happen is very bad press for WotC, as they will be linked to the failure of Curse and the loss of access even though they had nothing to do with it. Just like people, such as yourself, mistake the Curse DDB offering as somehow WotC in the shadows pulling strings rather than a straightforward business deal licensing IP. This would damage their future undertakings and likely mean they abandoned the digital market for a time (much like in the 3.x era).
jaelis
Oh this is where the title goes?
That part makes sense. I certainly believe that WotC has an interest in Curse succeeding with this. But if Curse could succeed at a lower price point (for the same licensing cost), I don't think WotC would have any problem with that.
Mistwell
Crusty Old Meatwad (he/him)
I am not confusing anything. You're saying the same thing I said, but apparently unaware it's the same thing. We both agree, WOTC gets a fixed fee for each sale. Licencee can sell it for whatever they want. But if they sell it below the fixed fee, they will be selling at a loss. The license likely has a recommended sell price in it. I've drafted probably over a 1000 of these licenses at this point, though not for WOTC. I feel pretty confident in what I am saying. But, it doesn't really matter anyway for this discussion. They're not sellng it for $1 and won't be
Maggan
Writer for CY_BORG, Forbidden Lands and Dragonbane
Pulling the strings? A very dramatic reading of my posts, where I basically posit that WotC has input into the pricing structure of DnD Beyond. Is that such an alien idea that we have to bring in dramatic readings of my posts to discredit it?
/M
Ovinomancer
No flips for you!
The 'input' is most likely only the licencing fee per sale. Curse, like Amazon (their ultimate parent company), is free to reduce their profit margin and sell cheaper. Honestly, the idea that WotC is structuring licenses in a way to protect book prices is completely negated by Amazon's pricing structure for those exact same books -- often almost 50% off retail for home delivery. Doesn't make a bit of sense for WotC to continue to distribute through Amazon while forcing digital partners to price to protect print prices.
The cost is likely because its 1) similar to print prices, and 2) affords Curse a reasonable profit margin for an uncertain venture (these kinds of tools are pretty much brand new on the market).
Further, the cost for the books is already $20 below the cover cost for the books. If you're comparing DDB prices they're already at the discount prices Amazon offers. DDB is already selling well below print prices.
As for discrediting your post, that statement wasn't the lynchpin in doing that -- your misunderstandings of how economics works was. You fished for a nitpick and ignored the rest.
Maggan
Writer for CY_BORG, Forbidden Lands and Dragonbane
I enjoyed your post up until the end paragraph. Have a nice weekend.
EDIT: Now that I have access to a computer, I will elaborate a little bit on my "understanding of economics works". The knowledge I have enables me to run a company with twelve employees and an annual turn-over of a little bit above 1 200 000 dollars. So I personally don't attribute my reasoning in this thread to a misunderstanding of how economics work. I readily confess to not working in publishing, except as a freelance game writer, and any information that gives me more insight into that is welcome.
/M
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Parmandur
Book-Friend
WotC really doesn't frequent these haunts anymore, Twitter is going to be the best bet to reach them.
cbwjm
Seb-wejem
I've been playing around with D&D beyond for a few weeks, it seems fine but it doesn't quite have the functionality that I'd like it to have so I'm probably not going to buy anything for it. I will admit that it is a great system to quickly build a PC from the ground up though and having it on my phone has been handy, perhaps when the offline apps come out I'll reconsider but more than likely I'm just going to revert back to a word doc for my PCs.
The signature of champions.
The signature of champions.
