Disappointed D&D Insider Customer

[whearp]

It's such a gross violation of my human dignity for Wizards to even have the GALL to insinuate how I can use the computer and software I paid for in the comfort of my own place. I am the master of my domain, Wizards, not you. Don't pretend to be all powerful, because that's just petty and dumb. We'll take our business elsewhere if you keep pissing us off. Oh wait...we already did.

Quoth the internets... "U Mad Bro?"

 

[Scribble]

and what revenue stream are you creating when you lock those windows? The same as not selling PDFs. None.

Sure- but we also don't know:

The cost of maintaining the pdf sales, the revenue they generated, and ultimately the profit loss, or net.

We also don't know all the factors that went into the ultimate decision.

Whatever the case, it appears they've decided to invest their resources for digital content into the DDI (and I have a feeling ebooks in the future...)

As I said before, I think they've decided to not so much "fight" piracy, as stop trying to compete with it. Offer something the pirates can't.

 

[renau1g]

Sure- but we also don't know:

The cost of maintaining the pdf sales, the revenue they generated, and ultimately the profit loss, or net.

We also don't know all the factors that went into the ultimate decision.

Whatever the case, it appears they've decided to invest their resources for digital content into the DDI (and I have a feeling ebooks in the future...)

As I said before, I think they've decided to not so much "fight" piracy, as stop trying to compete with it. Offer something the pirates can't.

As a rationale profit-making entity (which we have to assume Wizards is as part of Hasbro and therefore beholden to their shareholders) if the project (in this case PDF sales) generated a high enough ROI, then they would continue sales. It's simple business. If you make money doing something, more than the other alternatives (i.e. opportunity costs) than you will do it. Again, Paizo does it now and they haven't shut down operations, they're growing according to their CEO and James Jacobs (hired 2 more people this last week), so for at least one company in the market there is an ability to generate enough income to satisfy their stakeholders. One can easily extrapolate that there was not enough earned (whether they made a bit of $'s or lost a bit doesn't matter) to satisfy the decision makers at Wizards/Hasbro. Heck, they may have calculated that they lost sales of the core books to the pirates and calculated a negative ROI that way. As you said, we're dealing with imperfect information (at best) but assuming that they are a business and are operating as such, there really is only one reason to suspend PDF sales.

 

[Scribble]

As a rationale profit-making entity (which we have to assume Wizards is as part of Hasbro and therefore beholden to their shareholders) if the project (in this case PDF sales) generated a high enough ROI, then they would continue sales. It's simple business. If you make money doing something, more than the other alternatives (i.e. opportunity costs) than you will do it. Again, Paizo does it now and they haven't shut down operations, they're growing according to their CEO and James Jacobs (hired 2 more people this last week), so for at least one company in the market there is an ability to generate enough income to satisfy their stakeholders. One can easily extrapolate that there was not enough earned (whether they made a bit of $'s or lost a bit doesn't matter) to satisfy the decision makers at Wizards/Hasbro. Heck, they may have calculated that they lost sales of the core books to the pirates and calculated a negative ROI that way. As you said, we're dealing with imperfect information (at best) but assuming that they are a business and are operating as such, there really is only one reason to suspend PDF sales.

Yeah pretty much- someone decided there was a better way to operate in the digital marketplace.

 

[DEFCON 1]

It's such a gross violation of my human dignity for Wizards to even have the GALL to insinuate how I can use the computer and software I paid for in the comfort of my own place. I am the master of my domain, Wizards, not you. Don't pretend to be all powerful, because that's just petty and dumb. We'll take our business elsewhere if you keep pissing us off. Oh wait...we already did.

It's going to be all right, RL. Just show us on this character sheet where the bad RPG company touched you...

 

[MrMyth]

How much errata have we had?

I actually took a closer look like this, after someone on the WotC forums claimed there was enough Errata for it to be published as its own supplement. I'm not sure how relevant it is to the actual topic, but my findings were... somewhat interesting, so I thought I'd share.

The PHB clocks in at 320 pages, and is the product with the most Errata. 23 pages worth. However, keep in mind that the Errata looks somewhat more substantial than it actually is - it includes explanations of why changes were made, along with redundant information (as it posts both the Errata and, typically, reprints the original feat/power/etc in its new form.)

Trim down the PHB Errata to just the changes themselves, and we've got 12 pages worth. Remove the elements that are just fixing typos or adding minor clarifications, and we're probably under 10 pages.

The D&D Updates in total comes to 123 pages. Assuming a similar ratio of changes vs redundant material and explanations, we're probably looking at 60-70 or so actual pages of Errata. And again, if you take out typos and the like, I'd guess maybe less than 50 pages of genuine changes to the rules.

Now, 50 pages is a decent amount. But keep in mind - this is the Errata for 30 different D&D books, as well as 30 issues of the Dragon and Dungeon online magazines. All of that combined is something like 10,000 total pages of product.

So, how much Errata is there? Might be a lot, might be a little, depending on how one looks at it. I suppose everyone will still make a judgement call for themselves, but I certainly found the actual numbers on the topic somewhat interesting.

 

[Imaro]

As a rationale profit-making entity (which we have to assume Wizards is as part of Hasbro and therefore beholden to their shareholders) if the project (in this case PDF sales) generated a high enough ROI, then they would continue sales. It's simple business. If you make money doing something, more than the other alternatives (i.e. opportunity costs) than you will do it. Again, Paizo does it now and they haven't shut down operations, they're growing according to their CEO and James Jacobs (hired 2 more people this last week), so for at least one company in the market there is an ability to generate enough income to satisfy their stakeholders. One can easily extrapolate that there was not enough earned (whether they made a bit of $'s or lost a bit doesn't matter) to satisfy the decision makers at Wizards/Hasbro. Heck, they may have calculated that they lost sales of the core books to the pirates and calculated a negative ROI that way. As you said, we're dealing with imperfect information (at best) but assuming that they are a business and are operating as such, there really is only one reason to suspend PDF sales.

Okay, I am going to disagree that there is only one reason to suspend PDF sales... at least I am going to disagree with the reason you've given as the only one.

I honestly believe that people who bought the PDF books would have expected them to be updated with the eratta (like most rpg companies do with their PDF's) for free. With the amount and frequency of errata put out by WotC, this would have also made the PDF's even more attractive than the books for most but would have also required more work without the subsequent payoff of reselling the same materials. This also would have made the CB (Hey I can just copy and paste powers on a sheet now) and the online Compendium (hopefully, like Pathfinder, the PDF's would have links and search functionality) less valuable overall... it also would have made selling something like the RC to people who had these updated PDF's nearly impossible thus hurting the "revision profit stream".

In other words I think there could have and probably was more than one and only one reason they decided not to sell the PDF's.

 

[renau1g]

I honestly believe that people who bought the PDF books would have expected them to be updated with the eratta (like most rpg companies do with their PDF's) for free. With the amount and frequency of errata put out by WotC, this would have also made the PDF's even more attractive than the books for most but would have also required more work without the subsequent payoff of reselling the same materials. This also would have made the CB (Hey I can just copy and paste powers on a sheet now) and the online Compendium (hopefully, like Pathfinder, the PDF's would have links and search functionality) less valuable overall... it also would have made selling something like the RC to people who had these updated PDF's nearly impossible thus hurting the "revision profit stream".

In other words I think there could have and probably was more than one and only one reason they decided not to sell the PDF's.

Expecting updates to PDF would mean increased costs, therefore lower ROI therefore further reducing expected earnings potential. Reducing the value proposition of DDI? That would be factored in as well, the reduction in income from that line should have (and likely was) part of the analysis. Again, it's all about the bottom line.

 

[JoeGKushner]

It's going to be all right, RL. Just show us on this character sheet where the bad RPG company touched you...

Damnit, that's usually my line.

 

[eamon]

This is pretty directly contradicted by the sales history of the industry in general, even moreso the last 10 years and 3e/3.5 and 4e specifically.

Crunch heavy books (with that 13th level version of a hydra and another fighter feat for the pick-wielding half-elf) have been the runaway best sellers. Massively outselling other such books. d20 was a positive explosion of crunch.

That was kind of the point of that post - they can get all that for much less investment since the crunch doesn't have to come from them, merely go through them. People aren't paying for WotC crunch, they're paying to build characters. Despite all the complaints, the CB is hardly unsuccessful: not because of it's crunch (it adds no crunch), but because it's an easy and useful way to build characters.

Also, your assertion that books centered around "another fighter feat for the pick-wielding half-elf" massively outsell other such books is terribly misleading: there's a reason 3.5 was canned and a reason the old-style PHB1,2,3 series petered out: that approach bleeds out quickly. I bet MP2 sold much fewer copies than the first Martial Power. Crunch books outsell others because that's the way wizards chooses to support character building, not because the crunch really is all that interesting.