WotC WotC can, and probably should support multiple editions of D&D.

[mamba]

To be clear what I originally said was "1E is the only version that was more popular than 5E is (at least in print sales)."

I do not believe for a second that WOTC has sold more 5E material in print than AD&D 1E and all the versions of BECMI. I don't think 5E has sold as much printed material as Dragon magazine alone did during 1E.

if you count the magazines (and apparently novels…) you may be correct, without them 5e will have sold more, easily

TSR sold around 3M copies of the various basic sets (not including Expert, Companion or any AD&D stuff) and Dragonlance sold 30M products (to be fair, this includes the novels).

and by ‘includes the novels’ you mean 29.5M of that are novels…

 

[mamba]

Haven't we gotten pretty definitive sales figures on this issue by now?

if you compare PHB sales, sure, if you want to count all modules, no

 

[mamba]

Here's Bookscan, which captures only about 75% of sales

according to Teos Abadia it captures between 1/4 and 1/3 of sales…

 

[Zardnaar]

according to Teos Abadia it captures between 1/4 and 1/3 of sales…

4.5-6 million phb sold then.

 

[Zardnaar]

if you compare PHB sales, sure, if you want to count all modules, no

Including them probably yes.

You would have to include novels and the magazines as well.

 

[mamba]

Including them probably yes.

You would have to include novels and the magazines as well.

yes, 5e will have sold more than 1e when you count core, supplements, and adventures (but not magazines and novels). I meant that we do not have good numbers for that however, unlike the PHB numbers

 

[Zardnaar]

yes, 5e will have sold more than 1e when you count core, supplements, and adventures (but not magazines and novels). I meant that we do not have good numbers for that however, unlike the PHB numbers

We have some. There's two or three items in the low 6 figures everything else is under 100k presumably.

5E has core rules, xanathars, tashas, strahd and Dragon Queen as big sellers just on bookscan data alone.

 

[Li Shenron]

This has been a post that for me has been a long time coming. I think WotC can and should support multiple editions of D&D.

Could and probably should but definitely won't, don't hold your breath.

 

[bmfrosty]

"Probably should" requires a business plan. Heck, "can" requires a business plan because they are publicly traded and have a bunch of activist stockholders as we saw last year.

Sorry, your motivations aren't the relevant thing when you are claiming a business can do something, and should do something.

I'm sorry you think I write business plans for WotC.

 

[Hussar]

To be clear what I originally said was "1E is the only version that was more popular than 5E is (at least in print sales)."

I do not believe for a second that WOTC has sold more 5E material in print than AD&D 1E and all the versions of BECMI. I don't think 5E has sold as much printed material as Dragon magazine alone did during 1E.

TSR sold around 3M copies of the various basic sets (not including Expert, Companion or any AD&D stuff) and Dragonlance sold 30M products (to be fair, this includes the novels).

I can believe that more people play 5E than played 1E, but I don't think there are as many sales and I know there are not as many print sales. You mention DND Beyond and most of those 10M probably have access to a ton of books they have not purchased. For example, I know I have access to all the WOTC books on DNDB and most of the 3rd party books and the only electronic books I have purchased are: PHB, SODQ, VGM and OOTA. 3 months ago the only book I had on DNDB was SODQ.

This is before you consider how ubiquitous unauthorized/unlicensed material has become. My son and daughter both play in regular games with their friends and they do not use any purchased material. They use one of the pirate Wiki sites (which will go unmentioned) to build characters, select spells, subclasses etc and use other online resources for monster stat blocks.

I have no idea where you got those numbers from. But, Dragonlance selling 30 million products? Not a chance. There's just no way.

The RPG industry in total never really broke the 30 million dollar mark. TSR had sales of about 20 million in 1982.

But, no. Your numbers aren't even close to accurate.