Going back to the very first post:
the AD&D 1st Edition Players Handbook sold 1.5 million copies....
... the 4E PHB sold far less than the 3E PHBs.
I'm highly suspicious of statistics that are provided with less than a very very careful analysis. Most of what I get from this is that 4E sold less than 3E, and was expected to do better. This gives a basis to ask two questions:
(1) Why did 4E sell less well than 3E?
(2) Why did 4E sell less well than was expected? (Equivalently: Why was 4E expected to sell more than 3E?)
The various reasons that I've heard are a combination of:
(1) The game was changed too much. That is not to say that 4E isn't a great edition, only that it had too many changes to satisfy a relatively entrenched 3E D&D market.
(2) (
NOT the same as (1).) 4E doesn't hit the "sweet spot" of what most D&D players are looking for.
(3) The sales pitch was offensive: "Y'all playing 3E having been playing D&D wrong. You are idiots if you don't switch to 4E."
(4) There were expectations that the high returns of Magic: The Gathering could be replicated with a combination of an update to the game plus the release of collectable miniatures plus (reasonably) high expectations of an (unreasonably unready) subscription based digital platform.
(5) An underappreciation for the hesitancy of the D&D market to buy a new edition following the quick release of 3.5E on top of 3E.
(6) An underappreciation of the impact of the license change.
Maybe:
(7) The market was just smaller. The D&D market may have been saturated to the point that a new edition just didn't have the same available market.
For (1), I think it's important to distinguish analyses of how the game was different from analyses of how these differences were too much for the then current 3E market. For (1), there are cross-overs to other points: Certain changes might have been more palatable if presented with better messaging.
For (2), this shows up in various factors, for example, having the game being strongly coupled to the use of miniatures. Or, power effects being too abstract. Or, there not being enough stuff that is interesting to read in monster books. Then: 4E was a great game, just not the game enough players wanted.
Here, I want to emphasis that 4E does very well satisfy many players. The point is that it doesn't satisfy
enough D&D players. (This synergizes with the game changing quite a bit and with the very poor sales pitch.)
I don't have anything more to say about (3).
For (7), if we compare 3E, 4E, and 5E, 3E was released after a long drought of products; 4E much less so; 5E did have Pathfinder underfoot, but had a longer drought than 4E, if you consider 5E being a successor to 3E, not to 4E.
As for internal issues, without a way of telling whether the turmoil was more or less what regularly happens, there is no way to tell how the final product was affected. I can hypothesize, but don't have any way to test my hypotheses:
(1) The turmoil was exceptionally high, leading (one way or another) to many poor decisions.
(2) The turmoil was more or less what typically happens. Any failures are more attributable to other matters.
Alternatively:
(1') There was a failure of WotC leadership to manage issues in the presence of not too exceptional turmoil.
This places the emphasis on leadership and decision making. That seems a better focus than on the turmoil. Then, the problem was not the turmoil -- the problem was the failure of leadership and decision making in the presence of turmoil.
I think the failure of the electronic product should be looked at as a separate issue. There are a lot of additional factors which are involved. My best sense is that the company was not ready yet to create a product and product ecosystem of the scale which was being attempted.
TomB
