Mannahnin
Scion of Murgen (He/Him)
I think you've got the causal relationship a bit backwards here. I think TSR sank in large part because demand for their products failed. The most direct event that caused their bankruptcy was product returns and Random House demanding repayment, but the reason TSR couldn't repay them was that their revenue wasn't covering their costs, and they were papering it over with cash advances from Random House for books that gradually undersold. Some of it was genuine mismanagement like selling boxed sets whose production costs were actually higher than the price TSR sold them to distributors at. But fundamentally people just weren't buying TSR's stuff in sufficient quantities anymore; even products which were notably underpriced.The D&D hobby as a whole was suffering as a whole in the 1990s. All sales for all products take a massive hit in the 1990s because the company itself was failing, and dragging everything down with it. If TS&R could have held the line and managed this loss better, maybe all of these graphs for all campaign settings would be higher, and some might look more successful than others. But that's not what happened.
No argument that WotC saved D&D. I am curious about 3E, and I'm sure it sold well. Those hardcovers packed with new content were mighty attractive, especially at that initial $20 price point!I know that a lot of people want to hate Wizards of the Coast for various reasons, but for better or worse, WotC saved D&D. It was in very real danger of fading away into obscurity in the late 90s, and they brought it back to the fore. I understand that this research is focused primarily on TSR, but someday I'd love to see the sales graph stretched out to year 2020. I'd wager that 3E outsold all of these, combined.
But I'm less convinced that they really outsold the AD&D and D&D lines during the fad days. of '79-'84ish. We still haven't even seen sales figures from outside North America, and during the fad period TSR UK Ltd. was a whole subsidiary, distributing books to Europe, and the first couple (at least) BECMI sets were translated into many languages and were the origin point of D&D for a lot of folks in other countries.