Pathfinder 2E Release Day Second Edition Amazon Sales Rank

[BryonD]

A visible divergence in Amazon data means what? If all you have is product positions, it's possible both D&D and Pathfinder had identical changes in sales, with other products causing the different changes in positions. The second point doesn't necessarily mean anything.

Secondly, are you claiming that buyers of a product sold in Target and shown on Stranger Things has the same loyalty to game stores as buyers of a product known to mainly people who frequent game stores? Quantitative differences induce qualitative differences; niche products sell in different ways than mainstream ones.

Not to mention that sales trends have been different in the two products, and that Paizo's releases over the last month haven't included major volumes. Of all the lines, the Pathfinder Adventure Path line seems likely to be the most subscriber bound, so the fact they didn't release any books in the other lines wouldn't help.

Lastly, Paizo releases in PDF and most of their rules material is posted online for free. At a point when most physical gaming is shutting down, naturally physical sales of D&D are going to go on higher than Pathfinder sales.

What are you disagreeing with?
You seem to be providing a list of reasons WHY the things I'm saying are happening are in fact happening.

 

[BryonD]

I would add your "I claim that..." statement to this. We don't know that the PF2 announcement triggered the crash. Do we even know if there was a crash?

Well, clearly we don't.
According to the historic Top 5 list on ENWorld PF held steady at #2 until SF came out. Then It is 5E/SF/PF.
I am assuming that PF was still dying a slow death, but was more or less steady and it was just that SF was better. Certainly that is purely an assumption.
The very quarter that PF2E is announced PF suddenly drops out of the Top 5. Maybe the other games all leapt in sales and the same steady slow death just caught up with PF. But it seems quite a coincidence for it to happen that very quarter. So I'm presuming that PF sales dropped off then.

But, no, I don't really no.

 

[BryonD]

I think there was a temptation for them to think PF1's popularity was due to something more than it being a well-presented 3e retro-clone.

Ultimately, there is little way to argue with this.
But there are some things to consider.
If you look at PF vs. 3.5, PF embraces the over the top magic implicit in 3.5 and runs with it. It is little things like tweaks to sorcerers, but they kinda "turned it to 11". And there were people who complained that PF embraced the worst of 3.5*. But overall it seemed to resonate. They didn't come up with the chili recipe, but they added a pinch of one new seasoning and made it even more popular. After all, it did last for nearly a decade AFTER 3.5. That is an achievement.

And the APG was an extremely well received book. There are a lot of things in there that are purely PF and are now iconic.

But all that came out fast. It seems that we got the "greatest hits" of everything the staff have developed, played, and refined throughout the 3X days prior to PF, just cleaned up and aligned to one clear baseline.

After that, they were "fine". I have all the Ultimates books. I do reference them peridically. There is some really good stuff in there. But you have to dig a bit. I have joked that every title was 5% less awesome. But, clearly, that is just my own opinion.

It is like when you hear of a band that plays the local circuit for a decade and suddenly gets famous. They have 5 great songs on their first album, but these are all songs they wrote over that decade. Asking them to crank out album #2 is a challenge. Some bands can step up and others struggle.

So I guess I think it is somewhere in between. Maybe they didn't have the chops. Maybe they did. I think the 4E is deign team has a great resume, the post mortem on 4E not withstanding. Assumptions you make about how a game will come together when you start design appear to be as important as "chops".

* - It always stuck in my head that somebody on these forums back then described that they didn't like PF even though they did like 3.5 because PF had increased the "woo hoo!".

 

[BryonD]

Why let things like facts get in the way of a good theory? No matter how many "facts" you might point to, it's not going to matter.

I'm a big fan of trying to include as many facts and lines of evidence as possible.
And, yep, as I said back then and as I'm saying right now, "time will tell".

 

[Hussar]

And, yep, as I said back then and as I'm saying right now, "time will tell".

Now there, we absolutely agree.

 

[JFranklin3000]

I'm a big fan of trying to include as many facts and lines of evidence as possible.
And, yep, as I said back then and as I'm saying right now, "time will tell".

I hate not having good numbers. I mean even they latest Fantasy Ground report can be read two ways. 9 months in PF1 still has more games than PF2, or 9 months in PF2 has almost a 50% conversion rate, without a player focused rulebook line expansion. Both are right but in a year that will be much more telling.

PF was 3rd in the ICV2 rankings at best since Starfinder was released until the release of 2E but what does that really mean. Was 3rd $1000 or $100,000 in total sales. What is 2nd mean. If 3rd is $10,000 and 2nd is $100,000 then PF2 is doing way better then PF1 at the end, but it could be the difference between $90,000 and $100,000 still better but not by much.

Without a real sales number we are all really just guessing. Which is still fun btw.

 

[BryonD]

I hate not having good numbers.

There is a difference between having and giving the data you do have the level of interpretation it merits.
I can't say what the sales are for each thing. And I have not claimed to. But I can point to multiple lines of evidence which show a common trend.

I mean even they latest Fantasy Ground report can be read two ways. 9 months in PF1 still has more games than PF2, or 9 months in PF2 has almost a 50% conversion rate, without a player focused rulebook line expansion. Both are right but in a year that will be much more telling.

I don't agree.
Pre PF2E release PF was bouncing along at ~3000. Post PF2E it was bouncing along at ~2500.
The release month for PF2E shows a 3300 for PF2E. So it is roughly the same as PF. The one data point is 10% above our PF baseline. I don't see this data as valuable to the 10% level, but it seems fair to say that on release PF2E was on the equal(+) side of where PF had been. And PF drops about 15%. It is hard to not call that 15% a "conversation".
But then PF2E immediately drops off. PF stays stable at the new low. This suggests, very weakly, that the 15% conversion held. 15% of the prerelease PF engagement went away and stayed gone. Now, 15% on Fantasy Grounds doesn't tell us much about the marketplace. Maybe 5 sources would average to 10% and maybe they would average to 60%. But this FG data does not show 50% conversation.
We don't know how many of the games represent groups playing both. Probably a fair number.

After the drop off, PF2E pretty much stabilizes at ~2200 and PF stabilizes at ~2500. PF is also > PF2E for 5 consecutive months (all ignoring the pandemic bump so far). It is statistically unlikely for one to exceed the other 5 months running if equality is the expectation. So, for FG exclusively, PF gets the sustained equal(+) mark. And, again, for numerous source the average could shift significantly.

The pandemic bump shows 3100 new PF games (+19% from prior month) and PF2E shows 2600 new games (+15%). Again, this looks to be equal with PF on the Equal(+) side.

And, yet again, it would be a bad idea to look at this FG data alone as telling the story. There is no real point in doing this level of digging. You called it 50% conversion, so I'm playing along here.

Ultimately it is one line of evidence suggesting something in the ballpark of equity. It need to be viewed along with several other lines of evidence.

PF was 3rd in the ICV2 rankings at best since Starfinder was released until the release of 2E but what does that really mean. Was 3rd $1000 or $100,000 in total sales. What is 2nd mean. If 3rd is $10,000 and 2nd is $100,000 then PF2 is doing way better then PF1 at the end, but it could be the difference between $90,000 and $100,000 still better but not by much.

Without a real sales number we are all really just guessing. Which is still fun btw.

Ok, but now you are blatantly putting your thumb on the scale to make a point. And, obviously we can put our thumb on the other side of the scale just as easily. I don't claim that the ICV2 number show that PF2E is doing worse. I just claim that they DON'T show it is doing better. Which is really what your point here is saying.

We have a list of things that suggest PF2E is in the ballpark of where PF was before PF2E was announced.
The list of things suggesting PF2E is exceeding that is NULL.

 

[JFranklin3000]

There is a difference between having and giving the data you do have the level of interpretation it merits.
I can't say what the sales are for each thing. And I have not claimed to. But I can point to multiple lines of evidence which show a common trend.


I don't agree.
Pre PF2E release PF was bouncing along at ~3000. Post PF2E it was bouncing along at ~2500.
The release month for PF2E shows a 3300 for PF2E. So it is roughly the same as PF. The one data point is 10% above our PF baseline. I don't see this data as valuable to the 10% level, but it seems fair to say that on release PF2E was on the equal(+) side of where PF had been. And PF drops about 15%. It is hard to not call that 15% a "conversation".
But then PF2E immediately drops off. PF stays stable at the new low. This suggests, very weakly, that the 15% conversion held. 15% of the prerelease PF engagement went away and stayed gone. Now, 15% on Fantasy Grounds doesn't tell us much about the marketplace. Maybe 5 sources would average to 10% and maybe they would average to 60%. But this FG data does not show 50% conversation.
We don't know how many of the games represent groups playing both. Probably a fair number.

After the drop off, PF2E pretty much stabilizes at ~2200 and PF stabilizes at ~2500. PF is also > PF2E for 5 consecutive months (all ignoring the pandemic bump so far). It is statistically unlikely for one to exceed the other 5 months running if equality is the expectation. So, for FG exclusively, PF gets the sustained equal(+) mark. And, again, for numerous source the average could shift significantly.

The pandemic bump shows 3100 new PF games (+19% from prior month) and PF2E shows 2600 new games (+15%). Again, this looks to be equal with PF on the Equal(+) side.

And, yet again, it would be a bad idea to look at this FG data alone as telling the story. There is no real point in doing this level of digging. You called it 50% conversion, so I'm playing along here.

Ultimately it is one line of evidence suggesting something in the ballpark of equity. It need to be viewed along with several other lines of evidence.


Ok, but now you are blatantly putting your thumb on the scale to make a point. And, obviously we can put our thumb on the other side of the scale just as easily. I don't claim that the ICV2 number show that PF2E is doing worse. I just claim that they DON'T show it is doing better. Which is really what your point here is saying.

We have a list of things that suggest PF2E is in the ballpark of where PF was before PF2E was announced.
The list of things suggesting PF2E is exceeding that is NULL.

The tricky part with the monthly numbers is with release there are always a bunch of games that get created and never run, I was in a couple. So that month I always consider skewed. But I don't disagree with your numbers after that. So let's take your 15% as the converters group, then we have the day one adopters that make up the rest of what is on FG. But with all that the question is still the same does this actually tell us anything really. My answer is still to quote the Magic 8 ball Difficult to see ask again later".

The biggest question is of the remainder how big is the 3 remaining groups. The waiting for options, the finishing uppers, and the never gonna happens.

For ICV2 the made up numbers were just to say these rankings are just vague as hell and could mean anything for sales numbers. 2 could be a million in sales all the way down to a few hundred. So without knowing where PF1 got down to (I think we agree it got down or there is no reason for a new edition). It is hard to say if 2 in Q4 2016 is different then 2 in Q4 2019.

 

[JFranklin3000]

One thing I do find interesting is that first month drop of either never played or played in didn't like was about 25% so does that mean PF2 is keeping 75% of people that try it. That seems like a stretch but that does give me an idea of what the approximate size of the we don't like it group is. Still not sure how big the Paizo betrayed us with a new edition crowd is of course.

 

[Porridge]

A visible divergence in Amazon data means what?

I'm a little confused by this "divergence in Amazon data" for 5e and PF2 people are trying to explain. Their ranking trajectories mirror each other pretty closely, and the big picture changes in rankings all seem to have pretty straightforward explanations.

So, looking at the daily tracker here Amazon Sales Estimator - Estimate Monthly Sales Volume per Product and focusing on 2020, we see the following pictures:

Core PF2:

1. Up until March 13th: PF2 generally bounces around in the 2000-6000 range (averaging about 4000).
2. March 14th until April 10th: PF2 craters, generally bouncing around in the 5000-10000 range (averaging about 7500), hitting rock bottom on March 24th-25th, then recovering slightly.
3. Today: Currently at 3795 (as high as it's been in ages), but this is an unreliable figure (since it hasn't accumulated a full day of data yet).

5e PHB:

1. Up until March 13th: 5e generally bounces around in the 20-70 range (averaging about 45).
2. March 14th until April 28th: 5e craters, generally bouncing around in the 120-300 range (averaging about 210), hitting rock bottom on March 24th-25th, then recovering slightly.
3. April 29th and 30th: 5e has a massive sale, shoots up into the 20s.
4. May 1st-May 4th: Sale ends, 5e descends into the 70s.
5. Today: Currently at 118, but this is an unreliable figure (since it hasn't accumulated a full day of data yet).

Big-picture-wise, the trends of track each other pretty closely. Sales were pretty constant until March 13th, then they cratered (presumably due to coronavirus and economic downturn worries).

The big difference, of course, is the spike 5e had with its massive sale the last couple days of April, but that's easy to explain. And Amazon's rankings appear to use some kind of time decay function (though the exact details are proprietary information), so you'd expect that spike to pull up the 5e ranking for a little while, which is again what we've seen.

So what else needs explaining?...

I mean, I guess there's the big difference in ranking at the moment of writing (with 5e falling and PF2 rising), but that's too noisy to take seriously (since it hasn't accumulated a full day of data yet).