WotC strategy of Planned Obsolescence? (Forked Thread: WotC 4E D&D bloat)

[ggroy]

Forked from: WotC 4E D&D bloat (was Forked Thread: Pathfinder (PFRPG) bloat)

Wonder if Hasbro/WotC has all along been implicitly pursuing a business strategy of "planned obsolescence" for D&D, in some form or another for 3E/3.5E and now 4E.

Planned obsolescence - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Industries famous for planned obsolescence are computer hardware firms, like Intel. It is better for a firm to make their own products obsolete, than it is for one of their competitors to do it for them.

I suppose with all the bloat produced for 3.5E by WotC's proliferation of their own splatbooks, it made 3.5E D&D more and more into a huge mess. Perhaps in effect they were trying to "destroy" 3.5E, to make way for a 4E.

I imagine the easiest way to "destroy" 4E, would be for WotC to create more and more bloat until the game is huge mess after 5 or 6 years. By then, it becomes viable and more palatable for a 5E to be introduced.

 

[Umbran]

I don't believe this is the case, because the market will close the door on the edition for them.

The RPG market is small. It very quickly saturates with a given product - after everyone who is going to play 4e right now has a PHB, the sales drop to a comparative trickle of replacements and a few books for the occasional new gamer.

When the market is saturated with a product, the profit margin on each book drops. So, to keep a decent revenue stream, they have to keep printing new products. That's okay, so long as they have new rules-territory and cool settings to cover. But eventually, when they've covered all the different options folks want out of D&D, the whole edition has saturated.

Then will be the time for a new edition. They don't have to plan it into the release strategy - it will happen eventually no matter what they do. Eventually, the edition willnot be economically viable to keep in print.

Oh, and by the way, I think it is safe to say that WotC has no effective competition in tabletop RPGs at this time. WotC far outsells all other RPG companies, and by economy of scale thereby also probably makes more money per book than any other RPG publisher. There's nobody out there who can make their materials obsolete for them.

 

[xechnao]

I could see a slower production rate if they did dungeon and dragon in print. But I doubt this would make an edition much more resistant in time. It could extend edition life for an extra year perhaps? I guess they studied all these models, compared their ins and outs and settled for the most profitable one.

I am curious why they haven't tried a Wotc magazine. Focusing on all their products and thus strongly advertising to fans of each product all of their lines. Or have they?

 

[ggroy]

I don't believe this is the case, because the market will close the door on the edition for them.

If WotC are indeed pursuing such a strategy of planned obsolescence, perhaps they are doing it such that it doesn't saturate the market too quickly.

It would be more like a slow motion "train wreck", than flooding the market with tons of bloat in a fast and furious manner.

 

[xechnao]

It would be more like a slow motion "train wreck"

Yeah, it is like this. Their strategy is like this. The only alternative business strategy would be to support more than one edition. They are not doing this though.

 

[ggroy]

Oh, and by the way, I think it is safe to say that WotC has no effective competition in tabletop RPGs at this time. WotC far outsells all other RPG companies, and by economy of scale thereby also probably makes more money per book than any other RPG publisher. There's nobody out there who can make their materials obsolete for them.

Even without any other major competitors, the strategy of planned obsolescence can in principle be used as a way to preempt and ward off any existing and potential future competitors. Intel does this very effectively in the pc cpu business.

 

[Dausuul]

Yeah, it is like this. Their strategy is like this. The only alternative business strategy would be to support more than one edition. They are not doing this though.

Which would be a stupid and suicidal strategy. Having to support two editions, or software versions, or whatever, is an unpleasant position for any IP company to be in. It is at best a necessary evil, certainly not a goal to be pursued long-term.

 

[xechnao]

Which would be a stupid and suicidal strategy. Having to support two editions, or software versions, or whatever, is an unpleasant position for any IP company to be in. It is at best a necessary evil, certainly not a goal to be pursued long-term.

It is neither stupid nor suicidal. Many companies are doing this as long as their products can serve different needs. 3e, 4e, AD&D and BD&D are not just different versions. They are different games. They are not doing it because they studied it and found out that as things happen to be it would work better for them as they chose to do. Besides the OGL crippled their legs for something like that: they would have to compete on more fronts with less resources on each front.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I both agree and disagree.

I think they new that baring something wonky this would not be the last edtion of D&D...I think they also went into this with there eyes wide open. They figured on 3 basic power sources, and 1 per year (more or less) with power suplments coming out regularly. I also asume they think tey can handle the 'wind down' of no new PHB book for 1 year.

so my guess is WotC put a guess of 5-8 years for this edtion. and in one way that is planned obsolescence...

 

[Scribble]

Eh, I don't think this is the case.

I think they just didn't think hard enough about what an organizational nightmare things would become when they started meeting customer demand for things like feats and PRCs.

I think they wanted a system that allowed character options and variation, but just didn't understand what the "stackable" nature of everything would do.

I also don't really think PRCs were originally intended to play as big a role as they ended up playing. (Causing an unplanned area of expansion.)

This go around, not only do I think they learned a bit about how expandable systems work game wise, but also how they work organizationally. Right now in 4e there is a lot of info out there, but very little that EVERYONE at the table needs access to at all times.