AbdulAlhazred
Legend
4e is unsupported? If you go look at WotC's product catalog it is FILLED with 4e products. Yes, they have REPRINTED a smattering of classic adventures and a book or two from each of several older editions as limited collector's releases. There were only 1000 sets of the 1e books for the memorial IIRC, that's hardly a massive number. Sure, they will release a new 1e adventure, that's hardly reviving the product. Meanwhile they will publish 24 4e adventures in Dungeon and several more that have been released for LFR and organized play (admittedly some of these are technically not 'published', but they are all available). So, June 2008 to August 2014, I make that 6 years. Anyway, it is a silly argument, but you do this all the time, spinning things in a way that diminishes 4e as a game, like you want to see it reduced to some sort of insignificance or make some point.As I said earlier, 3.5e lasted a couple months longer than 4e, June 2003 to December 2007 compared to June 2008 to May 2012, almost half a year longer. (And if we're counting 3.0 and 3.5 as separate editions for duration it might be fair to spit 4e into Classic 4e and Essentials.)
And right now 4e is the only unsupported edition. They're publishing adventures for 1e, accessories for 3e, and core books for 2e. And this summer we get a brand new adventure for 1e.
The ROI on a book with NO editing or typesetting costs is pretty darn low! What do they have, new cover designs? For every dollar they make on that stuff they're bringing in $100 or $1000 from DDI alone. I'm sorry, I think you've stretched this whole hackneyed thing a bit too far.And right now they decided that two years with zero return on investment is better than continuing to publish material. And that the ROI on luxurybbooks people might already own and can find cheaper on eBay or Amazon is better than brand new 4e books.
Meh, not really, once the volume falls below a certain amount the cashflow is too low and you can't make money anymore, you won't meet overhead. It costs money to maintain stock, sales force, distribution, returns, etc. Each sale gets more and more expensive even though the cost of the actual product sold may go down. In the case of a book it only goes down so much too, printing is a big expense.Yes they are. However... the longer an edition runs the more profitable the core books become. After the initial print run you stop paying off the development, writing, art. Profit increases.
You want to keep reprinting the core rulebooks and producing content that feeds continued sales of those core books.
But again, we have little idea what the sales figures are for 4e books either. The problem with the comparisons people do with 4e and PF in particular is PF came out a full year after 4e, more actually. So what happened? 4e sold a TON of core books, and then, as always, sales tailed off and PF comes out with their core book, which outsells 4e AT THAT TIME. I know factually that the 4e PHB outsold the 3.5 and 3e PHBs, and it is perfectly reasonable to assume it has also outsold the PF core book, and may well have outsold all 3 combined.And 2013 will be the fourth year of Pathfinder and thirteenth year of 3e. And it's still going strong. The core Rulebook did quite well for it's first three years with the fifth printing (in late 2011) being the largest yet: after two years they were selling more core rulebooks than their first year.
It was quoted in a piece on one of the industry blogs right around the DDN announcement, quoted from one of the 4e developers that was released at that time. You can accept it at face value or not, frankly I don't need to prove anything, but it was a very plain straightforward quote, which I BARELY paraphrased from memory. Of course I presume that the statement would be qualified "sold more than any other WOTC game book in history" though that would probably also count TSR since their numbers are a matter of public record. I doubt WotC devs are privvy to the sales figures of other companies.Citation please?
That's a pretty bold claim considering 1e was the best selling edition (with only a dozen hardcover books over 10 years).
Sure, but the temptation to dip into the core book revenue stream one last time is almost irresistible. Nor is it at all clear what they will do after. Mike has stated what HE would like to do, but Mike is only in charge of R&D, not product strategy, sales, etc. In 5 years DDN is going to be where every edition is at 5 years, low sales. THAT will be when we see if they really changed strategy or not.I think WotC has learned that fewer splatbooks but bigger and broader appeal splatbooks are a better source of income, as are spatbooks that feed sales of the core rulebook.
And it sounds like they really want to focus on adventures, campaign worlds, and rules modules.
Except Paizo doesn't sound like it's planning on releasing an update or new edition any time soon.I'd say Strategically WotC is trying to change the tempo a bit, because they'd like to time things so that next time Paizo releases a core refresh that they can FOLLOW it. They learned that lesson good, its better to release your core books 6 mo after the other guy and cut out the tail of his sales and force him to burn money, like they are now.
They've talked about it, and they will do it eventually. If DDN is timed correctly then WotC can drop at least a minor refresh on PF2's tail and you can bet they will try.