D&D 5E Should I bother to subscribe to DDI if 5e is coming?

[Infiniti2000]

Yeah, I doubt we could get numbers (outside the # of subscribers), but perhaps someone might have more insight on it anyway. For one thing, is that # of subscribers the current paying subscribers or the total number of people who have ever subscribed? My more pessimistic view is the latter. That way, it helps pad stats.

 

[delericho]

Has anyone any insight on the ROI for DDI?

Only WotC. Everyone else is merely speculating.

The only number we have is that there are just over 62,000 members of one of the community groups that is somehow connected to DDI subscriber numbers. We believe that this represents a lower bound on subscriber numbers, and that the actual subscriber numbers are somewhat higher, although how much higher is anyone's guess.

Actually, that's not true. We also have some other numbers. We know that the lowest-priced subscription option works out to $6 a month. We know that in 2002, Dragon magazine had around 50,000 subscribers, and I know that my subscription worked out to around $3 an issue. (I took out a max-length subscription just before they stopped doing multi-year subscriptions. IOW, I had the lowest priced option.)

Now, we know (well, strongly suspect) that DDI has some unknown number of additional subscribers, but we also know that Dragon of 2002 had some unknown number of non-subscriber sales plus an unknown revenue from advertising.

So, where does that leave our comparison? Does DDI bring in twice as much as Dragon did? Four times? Ten times? We don't have enough information to reliably guess.

Then there are the costs to consider. DDI has the benefit of not being in print, which is obviously a very significant saving (printing costs, plus distribution, warehousing, and whatever else).

On the other hand, DDI has significant server costs. It has the cost of content not just for eDragon but eDungeon also (in print this was, of course, separate), plus the costs of developing and maintaining the tools. And the sunk costs for the previous versions of the tools, the Gleemax fiasco, and the 3d Virtual Tabletop. (It's also worth noting that print-Dragon didn't really canibalise book sales. We know that DDI has had at least some effect on sales, and especially sales of the crunch-heavy books that were generally the biggest sellers of the past.)

There's an awful lot of information that we just don't have. For me, the big unknown is the real number of subscribers. But if 62,000 is close to the actual number, then I would be very worried about the health of DDI - the reason I took 2002 as my point of comparison was that WotC very nearly cancelled the magazines at that time, as they were considered not worth the effort. In the end, they licensed them out to Paizo instead.

I'm curious that if there's enough people "waiting" before subscribing to DDI, then Hasbro may decide to just shut it down.

That's a very real possibility. I would expect that such a decision would be made based on the number of subscribers, not some notion about the number of people who are 'waiting' to subscribe, or people who might subscribe, or any other people who are not subscribing. Either it's doing well enough or it is not.

So, imagine if Hasbro decided to shut down the DDI and never restart it? Would all the people who currently don't subscribe clamor for it or say good riddance?

At this point, if DDI goes, I expect D&D as a whole (or at least as an RPG) to go with it. We would almost certainly continue to see D&D licensed as an MMO, as a board game, as a movie, maybe even as a CCG. But I don't see it continuing as an RPG in the absence of DDI, and I certainly don't see Hasbro/WotC selling it on, unless Bill Gates is a closet gamer and decides that he's willing to pay silly money for it.

Frankly, I hope DDI has 100,000 subscribers that we don't know about.

 

[Nikosandros]

Yeah, I doubt we could get numbers (outside the # of subscribers), but perhaps someone might have more insight on it anyway. For one thing, is that # of subscribers the current paying subscribers or the total number of people who have ever subscribed? My more pessimistic view is the latter. That way, it helps pad stats.

IIRC, several people reported that after cancelling their subscription, they were removed from the group. So, that number represents a lower bound on the number of current subscribers.

 

[Scribble]

There's more to the magazine thing then just number of subscribers though.

One of the biggest things magazines have to do is sort of guarantee they will sell X number of copies at a news stand, otherwise they have to buy them back; DDI doesn't take that hit.

We also don't know whether it was correct thinking about "not worth their time."

I'm guessing they realized that a subscription model was a better way to handle how they like to sell games... As continuous updates of new stuff.

 

[Riastlin]

Well, assuming for arguments sake that 62,000 is the actual number of subscribers currently (which is probably not particularly a safe bet), and that everyone subscribed is currently at the $6 a month rate (which almost certainly is not a safe bet), that means a monthly gross intake of $372,000, or just under $4.5 million annually. I would say, that even if both the number of subscribers and the average subscription price are accurate, then its still likely that DDi is pretty darn profitable.

Its certainly true that DDi has cut into the book sales. I also think that WotC not only realizes this, but plans to embrace it in the future. It seems fairly clear that they understand digital distribution is the way of the future so I think that more and more you'll see the mainly crunch books simply come out in the form of DDi, such that it won't per se be cutting into other profits (i.e. there aren't print books sitting on shelves).

The other thing to keep in mind is that DDi has no doubt been expensive to develop. In fact, I think its a safe bet that its cost WotC a lot more than intended given that they have basically developed each of the online tools twice. However, one of the good things about online tools and DDi in general, is that the costs of developing them tend to far outweigh the cost of maintaining them. It's certainly not free to maintain, but it is relatively cheap. In fact, when the change to 5ed does come, it will be really cheap to maintain DDi 4ed tools because they wouldn't need much in the way of updates, just general server maintenance.

In short, I think that long term, DDi is going to be very profitable for WotC, even if they don't draw much more than 62,000 subscribers.

 

[was]

DDI will continue into 5th ed. Whether or not you want to stop subscribing until it comes out is up to you. You have to decide if you want to continue to pay for 4th ed. stuff, both books and online content, or wait on the next edition.

 

[Mistwell]

It takes around 2 years to write a new edition, and by appearances the arrival of Monte Cook marks the beginning of that writing. And given that 2014 marks the 40th anniversary of D&D, I'd guess 5e would come out in early 2014.

So if you plan on playing 4e for the next two years, and you find the DDI to have utility for your 4e game, then I think a subscription makes sense, even if you believe 5e is being written now.

 

[Morrus]

Infact if you really dislike a company enough to really want to see them fail in this buisness... start a good rumor of a new edtion.

That's very cynical! They can end such a rumour with a definitive statement - it's completely in their power to do so.

 

[Pentius]

That's very cynical! They can end such a rumour with a definitive statement - it's completely in their power to do so.

If the statement is "Yes, we are." then sure, but I've yet to see statements from WotC calming people down if that statement contradicts what people are worked up about in the first place.

 

[Scribble]

That's very cynical! They can end such a rumour with a definitive statement - it's completely in their power to do so.

You really think that's true?

I don't- they could come right out and say what they were doing and 5 minutes later someone would point out the "hidden meaning behind what they said..."

Plus Monte Cook himself said this on his site regarding his employment at WoTC:

While I'm at it, let me also add, please don't make assumptions about what I'm doing based on things I've done in the past. The future is not yet written.

But I'm sure there are already plenty of people figuring out the best way (no matter how many hoops you'd need to jump through) to twist this somehow into I'm working on 5e!