D&D (2024) 2024 Player’s Handbook is ‘Fastest Selling D&D Book Ever’

It’s only officially been out for a week, but according to Wizards of the Coast, the new Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook has already surpassed Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything to become the fastest selling D&D book ever—in the entire 50-year history of the game. It has sold three times as many copies as the 2014 version of the books did at launch.

Not only that, the 2024 Player’s Handbook was the biggest print run in D&D’s history.

In a press release today, WotC claims more than 85 million D&D fans worldwide, and says that D&D Beyond, the game’s official online platform, has over 18 million users.

 

[BovineofWar]

Late to the party to comment...

To put this into perspective (and think about this one...)

How many people do you know that bought an Xbox One?

How many people do you know that bought and Xbox 360?

How many people do you know that bought a Playstation 3?

How many people do you know that have a Playstation 5?

WotC claims it has more fans of D&D than those numbers.

To clarify, WotC is making no such claims. I wish I could find the quote, but Phil Spencer of Microsoft has had estimated the size of the console industry as A) 200-300 million consoles, and B) essentially static between generations.

If you grab the sales data off Wikipedia, the rough estimate of Xbox 360 + PS3 sales are ~190 million. Xbox One + PS4 sales are ~180 million, and still in progress. Xbox Series + PS5 sales are less than 100 million, and not projected to substantially succeed the previous generation. Throw in some fudge factors to account for Nintendo consoles and people that own multiple consoles.

WotC is claiming 85 million fans of D&D, which as other people have pointed out is based on a definition of people playing (potential buyers), not PHB purchases. So by that metric, the size of the D&D market (and likely extendable to the TTRPG market) is smaller than the console gaming market according to WotC's projections, let alone PHB sales to unit console sales.

The news here isn't that D&D is bigger or smaller than consoles. Both Sony and Microsoft have indicated that there are structural problems in the console industry: the market is not growing fast enough to sustain the increased time of development and cost of AAA games.

Meanwhile, D&D 5E has had exponential growth compared to previous editions, and WotC is claiming 3x growth on the 2024 PHB, indicating that growth hasn't stalled on the latest revision. The story here is that the TTRPG market is probably healthy and growing.

 

[Parmandur]

Throw in some fudge factors to account for Nintendo consoles

...the soon to be best selling console of all time is a "Fudge factor"??

Nintendo took over the console industry in the 20s.

 

[mamba]

they are also selling a not-insignificant number themselves these days, and if there's really 18 million DDB subscribers

I believe it is 18M accounts / users, not subscribers

 

[Parmandur]

I believe it is 18M accounts / users, not subscribers

Yeah, I've had a free account for years and never spent a dime.

However, when you get into the millions of accounts, the law of averages kicks into gear, and I would wager that 18 million account holders spend in the neighborhood of 50% more than 12 million account holders did. When Beyond was an independent company that paid Hasbro hefty licensing fees with fewer accounts, they were operationally profitable. So with millions more accounts, and no license fees...bling bling.

 

[mamba]

No, I'm saying what I get in money from when they figure out the numbers doesn't always reflect what I hear them saying...and when pressed...well...sometimes it's hard to get a straight answer.

Hasbro is notoriously vague about presenting meaningful numbers, but then your 17M books at $25 a piece is so far off what I would expect that no numbers will ever match that

From Bookscan we have a rough estimate of around 6M PHB sales, plus whatever was sold digitally across the different VTTs. I doubt that those combined triple that number…

I just find it hard to believe some of the stuff they spout when reflecting on recent stock holdings at years end

Hasbro is a lot more than just D&D or even WotC. D&D stock would perform much differently from Hasbro’s.

I should also note, even if you took the 40 million they stated previously, and said only 15 million of those were active D&D players...85 - 25 = 60 million.

how do these numbers relate to each other and what does the 60 tell me?

The 40M feels about right, from what I have heard there are about twice as many players as DDB users (or about half the players have a DDB account)

As to your ‘if there were 85M players, why do I see fewer PHBs than xBoxes’, first of all there are no 85M players, second not all of the players have a PHB. If you go with 6-7M PHBs instead of three times that, it might work out better

 

[BovineofWar]

...the soon to be best selling console of all time is a "Fudge factor"??

Nintendo took over the console industry in the 20s.

There's less of a console exclusivity thing going on with Nintendo these days, so you have a lot of Sony or Microsoft players buying Nintendo consoles as well. You can add ~100 million Wii sales or >150 million Switch to the Microsoft + Sony numbers and overestimate the market size or add less and underestimate it. Not trying to stoke the core vs casual gamer conversation, just interpreting things the way that Phil Spencer laid out the argument.

I don't really trust any of these numbers at all to be honest, just the general tendencies. They're just accurate enough to justify:
A) video games are bigger than TTRPGs by market.
B) video games have slow growth right now.
C) TTRPGs are still having good growth right now.

Likewise, based on all the anecdotal evidence, I don't see any reason to disbelieve WotC's claims on this press release. I'm sure they have other unrealistic projections on market growth, digital capture, and increasing the profitability per customer, but on the face of it the total number D&D fans and sales trends of the 2024 PHB seem reasonable assertions.

 

[mamba]

The question they will ask is...If you have 85 million fans...why don't we get money like other companies which have 85 million fans?

having played D&D at least once in the last 50 years does not make you a fan

 

[mamba]

Whatever the article says, the investors are more adept and thorough than all of us combined when it comes to figuring out whether this is a financial success.

you give investors too much credit…

 

[Sulicius]

you give investors too much credit…

Not really, I just give us less credit.

 

[Parmandur]

There's less of a console exclusivity thing going on with Nintendo these days, so you have a lot of Sony or Microsoft players buying Nintendo consoles as well...just interpreting things the way that Phil Spencer laid out the argument.

Sorry to indulge in a little off-topic discussion here...but I am of the belief that Microsoft, Sony, and a lot of video game industry analysts made a mistake heading into other Generation thinking that people had bought a Switch as well as Xbone or PS4 as a secondary console....when they bought the Switch as their new main console. Explains alot about Series/PS5 sales.