Mike, in your experience, how long does it take for that gap to be bridged? My (completely amateur) take on it has been that it takes roughly two years until we get a clear picture of how things shook out. Does that sound right to you?
We'll know sooner, because we'll see it based on how Wizards acts and what we see from the quarterly results calls.
They just added two more products to the schedule for '25, bringing them up to six products and hitting a product per month from July onward. I have consistently heard and observed that backlist sales have plunged. I think (but don't know, yet) that the audience and retailers are treating 5.5 as a new edition. They probably need to get product out as quickly as possible to refill the backlist and boost their overall sales.
There's some very juicy industry gossip going around about how Kickstarter customers react when you tell them that they product they backed a year or two ago is designed for 5.5. I have heard that some projects are forced to offer 5.5 and 5e books, with the split looking pretty close to 50/50 among backers. That very much sounds like folks are treating it as a new edition. It's also a really bad sign, as those are people spending money on 5e content. I'd expect something a lot closer to 80/20 in favor of the new edition if uptake was strong.
The underlying danger is that they might have flipped the business into a front-list driven one, which hurts their profitability and requires a steadily inflating overhead. It's also interesting that their timeline for UA tests has been pushed even narrower. They're testing material at a point where they can't make meaningful, informed decisions. Were I in their shoes, I'd junk the program. It's probably transforming into a liability.
The risk is that hitting the gas leads to lower quality, which leads to lower sales, which leads to no long tail, which puts more pressure on the front list, which leads to more products, which leads to lower quality, etc.
(As an aside: Public playtests are great for picking from one option among many. The 5e playtest was primarily an exercise in market research. We really had nothing set in stone until we received feedback, then pivoted as we went. The UAs for Xanathar's allowed us to pluck the best subclasses from a large pile of design. Most of them ended up on the cutting room floor.
In contrast, the ship rules from Ghosts of Saltmarsh were going to be published no matter what. The ratings were high, but the end result wasn't great. For Ghosts, it would have been much better to test two systems with radically different takes on the concept, and let the audience tells us which one they preferred.)
For the quarterly results call in February, based on what WotC has said publicly D&D results should feature prominently as a big win. To show year over year results, they'll compare two core rulebooks against the Phandelver book (Amazon rank and reviews show that it sold poorly) and the Deck of Many Things product, which they had to recall and reprint. Those are very favorable comps. I think they could show some crazy growth year over year, 100% growth or more in tabletop sales.
A lot of analysis comes down to remembering what someone said in September, then checking that against what they say in March. That's the best way to track how things are changing behind the scenes. Especially at a place like Hasbro and that 3 BILLION dollar debt hanging over them, they're going to be under massive pressure to deliver high margin products.
