10:1 illegal downloads

[Grazzt]

Whenever WotC has referred to players of D&D before, in the millions, I've always taken that as meaning "of all editions of the game".

Yep. Same here.

I didn't expect WotC to be selling millions of Player's Handbooks in the first year of a new edition, that's for sure.
/M

I think 3.0 did (I believe it was Dancey and a few others I saw make reference to this), but that was likely because D&D prior to that was basically at death's door in the last few years of TSR.

 

[Maggan]

mearls: Thank You, Thank You, Thank You!

http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...-previous-edition-good-bad-2.html#post4278762

Thanks.

So from that we know that WotC are claimining that initial print runs for 4e were bigger than those for 3.5 and 3.0. And that they sold out of the initial print run of 4e very quickly.

That's a good first piece of the puzzle.

Now, is the claim of "we sold a million of PH for 3rd edition in the first year" likewise verifiable?

Or do we have a size of the the initial 3.0 print run documented somewhere? I doubt that the initial print run would be 1 million books, so to reach that target, 3.0 would probably have gone through several printings.

Can anyone with insider knowledge from the industry (not WotC, since I don't think they'll give out the info) give a hint as to the normal sizes of core book print runs?

10 000? 50 000? 100 000? What's the ballpark here?

/M

 

[DracoSuave]

And 10:1 or even 100:1 is better than x:0 PDF piracy does not equate to lost hardcopy sales. At all.

This statement is proven false by the existance of any individual who downloaded the PDF -rather- than buying a hard copy. The second someone says 'I downloaded the PDF so I don't need to buy it' this statement is false.

If you think that no one has said this, I should send you a picture of a bridge, because I -know- you'll buy that too.

 

[Krensky]

This statement is proven false by the existance of any individual who downloaded the PDF -rather- than buying a hard copy. The second someone says 'I downloaded the PDF so I don't need to buy it' this statement is false.

If you think that no one has said this, I should send you a picture of a bridge, because I -know- you'll buy that too.

A pirated copy is a lost sale in two circumstances.

The first is when someone was going to buy the book, downloads it, realizes he doesn't want it after reading some, deletes the file and does not buy the book.

The second is when someone was goigng to purchase the books (as distinct from wanting to purchase), downloads the file, and does not purchase it.

Generally speaking, most pirates, even those using your line, are not in either category. Most of them would not have bought the books regardless for whatever reason. They are not a lost sale, because they were not going to be a sale in the first place.

 

[Jack99]

Sorry for not getting back to this earlier: I have no idea how I missed it!

I think that looking at PDF prices as a percentage of the cost of the real book misses the mark, since they're totally separate products with such different uses. With that said, I looked at Goodman Games' stuff on RPGNow, and they're priced at about 60% of retail, so that's a bit better than WotC. What's more important is that the basic book is cheaper as well. I haven't looked at Paizo, since they're not making products that I use anymore, but I expect it's something similar: lower price on the print products equates to a lower price at the PDF level by the same percentage. So that's my basic answer: yes, WotC may have been selling for the same percentage, but they're also charging more for the basic product to begin with. Buying, say, a $15 print module for $10 as a PDF is easier to budget for, even though as a percentage cost, it's about the same.

With the core books, they were selling at the end for $25, which is simply more than the market was looking to pay for that kind of product in most cases. There are examples of folks who didn't have easy access to the print products buying them, as well as people who could get them at much higher prices due to their country of origin. I'm not sure what the cost for WotC books are in Denmark, but depending on that if our situations were reversed and I were over there, I might have picked up the PDFs as a cost saving measure as well.

For me, when I look at a PDF purchase, I think about what I'm getting for what I'm spending. I'm basically getting something to reference and copy and paste from for characters or adventures. For most systems, anything over about $15 just isn't worth it to me for the convenience. From what I've seen, I'm not alone in that respect: all of the people in my group have expressed similar issues, and it's been a common complaint in threads on ENWorld as well.

I like PDFs, and I like supporting PDF companies, but the cost-benefit from buying them has to be there in order for me to spend over what I'd consider a reasonable amount. Again, I think the lack of sales for WotC's 4E PDFs largely came from the fact that they didn't have the perceived value for the cost. Maybe it's just some weird American thing or something

--Steve

I see your point. I got your argument mixed up with another argument that is pretty prevalent amongst some people, namely that WOtC charges more (comparatively) than other companies for their PDF's.

As for your question about prices in Denmark, the PHB2 cost $65. So yeah, PDF's are fairly cheap for me. For what it is worth though, I own all books made by WotC.

 

[Thanee]

And yes, we can track it.

Yeah, right.



The problem with all those comparisons is, that they do not answer the actual question.

The question is...

If the piracy would not happen, how much more books/pdfs would be sold?

A downloaded vs. bought pdf ratio (whoever dreamed those numbers up, because it is 100% impossible to "track" that) has absolutely no bearing on this question. At most, it is an indicator about how many people are interested in the product, but surely not how many would have bought it. I'm sure, that a huge number of the pirated books would never have been sold, anyways. So, while it certainly is infringement, there is no loss at all for those (not all of them, there is some loss included for sure, it's just not even close to 100% of the pirated books).

You cannot equate illegal downlads with lost sales, it's simply naive to assume there is a high correlation between those two.

Bye
Thanee

 

[BryonD]

Now, is the claim of "we sold a million of PH for 3rd edition in the first year" likewise verifiable?

Over in the "Death Spiral" blog post Dancey has tossed out the number 300,000 for the first 30 days. That does not meet the "verifiable" level, but it makes me think 1,000,000 is probably high. Just guessing, I'd be surprised if they got less than 1/3 of their first year sales in the first month.

 

[Grazzt]

Generally speaking, most pirates, even those using your line, are not in either category. Most of them would not have bought the books regardless for whatever reason. They are not a lost sale, because they were not going to be a sale in the first place.

This. The music industry ran into the same thing a few years ago. Just because the latest and greatest CD was pirated 1,000,000 times does not result in 1,000,000 lost sales.

 

[mudbunny]

This. The music industry ran into the same thing a few years ago. Just because the latest and greatest CD was pirated 1,000,000 times does not result in 1,000,000 lost sales.

But at the same time, it doesn't mean that there were no lost sales due to pirating. The reality is somewhere in-between 0 and the number of people who downloaded it. And that decision is made by a judge after arguments from both sides trying to convince him/her that their particular number is right.

 

[Bagpuss]

But at the same time, it doesn't mean that there were no lost sales due to pirating. The reality is somewhere in-between 0 and the number of people who downloaded it. And that decision is made by a judge after arguments from both sides trying to convince him/her that their particular number is right.

If they really thought piracy was causing lost sales, would they now make it easy to listen to whole brand new albums for free online? If DRM worked would they really have removed it from downloads?