ZOMG! D&D drops to #4

[Arduin's]

If WotC had decided to sell real digital copies of past edition Core rule books it would have made a lot this last year.

 

[Zardnaar]

Excellent point. Consider Timewatch. Over $100K in sales, nearly 2000 customers, and if we count the various pdfs and printed items separately, multiple products to each person. I am left wondering how this compares to, say, FATE Core for the period.

IIRC you need around 5000 in sales to make it to number 5 on the list. D&D has not been number 1 since early 2011 IIRC. 13th Age seems less popular than Dungeon Crawll Classics which made the list late 2012.

 

[jodyjohnson]

If WotC had decided to sell real digital copies of past edition Core rule books it would have made a lot this last year.

Digital PDF sales don't register at all on these surveys.

This is not really a reflection on how much money WotC is making (other than continuing to make the big bucks in CMG). Amazon, online, DDI, DnDClassics continue to not register in these surveys.

It's a reflection on what folks are seeing when they walk into a brick and mortar.

 

[Arduin's]

Digital PDF sales don't register at all on these surveys.

I know that. I was simply stating a fact and pointing out where they are bleeding rev.

 

[M.L. Martin]

The report are now 3 a year, Spring, Summer and Fall.

Without the historical data, I'd guess the only time they had a shot at not being #1 was during the bankruptcy and during the key releases from White Wolf in the 1990s.

There was one month in that period when D&D slipped to #2--when no new product was being released and Vampire: The Masquerade Revised had just been released.

 

[darjr]

Evil Hat publishes their sales figures. What have they been for FATE recently?

 

[Morrus]

There was one month in that period when D&D slipped to #2--when no new product was being released and Vampire: The Masquerade Revised had just been released.

Whatever ancient sales data you're citing there, it can't be compared like-for-like to the ICv2 data which has only been going for a few years and started, I believe, just after the launch of 4E. There's no actual comparable like-for-like period using the ICv2 reports; even 3.5-4E is too early for it.

Plus, as everyone keeps pointing out, and has done every quarter for the last five years, ICv2's reports are purely ancedotal. No sales figures at all.

But that aside - the thought of seeing some 1990s sales data has me salivating. Where are you getting your figures? I'd love to post them!

 

[Bluenose]

Evil Hat publishes their sales figures. What have they been for FATE recently?

They're here for the last quarter of 2013. Down on Q3, for reasons that the post tries to explain. I'm not sure how the periods Fall 2013 in the IcV2 survey and the Q3/Q4 in Evil Hat figures compare. I also wonder, are the stores including sales of Dresden Files et al among the Fate sales?

 

[Argyle King]

Star Wars and Pathfinder seem to match up with my own anecdotal evidence here in my local area; though I'd say that Edge of The Empire probably does better than Pathfinder around here.

After those two, it would be the various rpgs based on Warhammer; in particular, Rogue Trader seems to be popular in this area.

After that, it's a mix of everything to varying degrees. Iron Kingdoms, D&D, some old Heroes Unlimited stuff which still lingers on the shelf of one of the local stores, and the occasional hardback GURPS release are likely toward the top of that mix. Fate and Fate Core is nonexistence here; the same can be said of 13th Age. The new Game of Thrones rpg and Savage Worlds are both occasionally mentioned.

 

[Umbran]

Evil Hat publishes their sales figures. What have they been for FATE recently?

In Q3 of 2013 (to match the iCV2 numbers...)

http://www.evilhat.com/home/q3-sales-2013/

FATE Core sold... 2059 copies. It's lifetime total was 11873 copies at the end of the quarter. FATE Core itself did not make 5000 sales for the quarter, so I don't think Zardnaar is right on that point. You'd have to stack FATE Core, FATE Accelerated, and two Dresden Files books to make such a number...

So, in terms of number of copies of rules, Timewatch came close, but did not beat, FATE Core for number of copies sold. Timewatch beat the stuffing out of the effective revenue, though - a base copy of FATE Core costs $25, so that's about $51000K in sales for the quarter, where Timewatch effectively had over $100K in the kickstarter.

There are points where the comparison falls over, of course. The Timewatch Kickstarter is a one-time thing, while FATE Core is a longer-running model that has already exceeded the kicksatarter by a factor of two in dollars. And FATE Core's had apparently some really weird swings in sales - Q1 was 9600+, Q2 was 120, Q3 was 2059 units. So, maybe I picked a bad example for comparison.