2024 D&D Core Rulebooks Off to "Strongest-Ever" Start for D&D Books

Dungeons & Dragons got a rare shoutout during Hasbro's 3rd quarter earnings report, with Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks stating that the 2024 Core Rulebooks were off to a record start. Today, Hasbro released its third quarter 2025 earnings report, with Wizards of the Coast propping up the overall revenue for the company. Wizards of the Coast is up 33% YTD, with Magic: The Gathering having a 40% jump compared to last year. However, Cocks also called out Dungeons & Dragons in his comments, speaking to both the Core Rulebooks and D&D Beyond's Maps VTT.

Cocks' full comments (which are admittedly very brief) can be found below:

The refreshed 2024 editions of D&D’s Monster Manual, Players Handbook, and DM Guide are off to the strongest-ever start for D&D books. D&DBEYOND’S new, accessible virtual tabletop has driven weekly traffic up nearly 50% since its September launch.

Hasbro is having a good year, with total revenue up 7% compared to last year. Wizards is expected to be up 36-38% for 2025, largely due to the performance of Magic: The Gathering.

 

[Zardnaar]

Lifetime? No. 1e was the peak and each edition was less (maybe 4e did better then 3.5 but that is it) until the great 5eing. There has been several confirmations of this.

Now comparing the first year of one to the first year of another is a different story. I am sure 2024 sales have great. Will they ever 2014 lifetime sales? Unclear.

Basic eas also kind of the peak but it was split over 2 bixed sets vs 1 phb.

Basic line core books outsold AD&D core combined 4.5 to 3.5 million.

PHB 2E was peak in terms of individual D&D item.

 

[Stalker0]

They did give us that solid metric a month in: the 2024 PHB had, within that month, sold as much as the first two years of the 2014 PHB, which at 23 months we had been told the 2014 PHB had outsold the lifetime sales of the 3E, 3.5, and 4E PHBs. So we know that 2024 is, in absolute terms, the second best selling edition produced by AotC...even if they stopped selling PHBs 1e months ago which they have not. So that's one solid indicator, 2024 is already in absolute terms sold more than

But what we learned from this recent one whi h is probably way more important to Hasbro: D&D Beyond active users are up 50% since the 2024 launch. That's what they actually want, users, not book sales.

Can we get a source on this? And that's not me being ornery here, if we can get some validation this is a very solid metric to use in these discussions, and I want to ensure people see it and use it.

 

[Greg K]

I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure every set of core books has outsold the previous set. The more important question is by how much, and if growth met projections or not.

I dont' know if that is true. If I recall correctly, Mearls said in the past that 4e initial sales were better than 3e, but Professor DM, recently, said that overall sales of 4e at its peak were less than 3e. I think he said he was quoting Mearls. who also said that 3e were still doing well and they were told by the "suits" to make a 4e. Sales estimates:

5e 2014: 1.6 million
1e: 1.5 million
3e: 1 million
2e: 750K
4e: 300K

 

[Zardnaar]

I dont' know if that is true. If I recall correctly, Mearls said in the past that 4e initial were better than 3e, but Professor DM, recently, said that overall sales of 4e at its peak were less than 3e. I think he was quoting Mearls. who also said that 3e were still doing well and they were told by the "suits" to make a 4e. Sales estimates:

5e 2014: 1.6 million
1e: 1.5 million
3e: 1 million
2e: 750K
4e: 300K

Did he provide a source for his estimates. I saw that video.
Other people in industry have said 4E was under 800k and under 600k.

300k is similar to what ive seen for 3.5.

 

[Gradine]

I dont' know if that is true. If I recall correctly, Mearls said in the past that 4e initial sales were better than 3e, but Professor DM, recently, said that overall sales of 4e at its peak were less than 3e. I think he said he was quoting Mearls. who also said that 3e were still doing well and they were told by the "suits" to make a 4e. Sales estimates:

5e 2014: 1.6 million
1e: 1.5 million
3e: 1 million
2e: 750K
4e: 300K

If memory serves, Professor DM was one of those YouTubers citing BookScan data wildly out of context to create clickbait videos about D&D 2024's downfall, I'm not sure I would consider him a particularly solid source.

 

[Zardnaar]

If memory serves, Professor DM was one of those YouTubers citing BookScan data wildly out of context to create clickbait videos about D&D 2024's downfall, I'm not sure I would consider him a particularly solid source.

I consider 1.6 million phb a very low estimate.

There are some scenarios its plausible however. Basically there's 6 or 7 mammoth 5E products vs 3 for TSR golden age.

Others used book scan and mentioned 6 million.

I used bookscan to indicate trends and confirm some things WotC said. If one knows the rough % bookscan represents you probably have a ballpark estimate using multiplication.

 

[Parmandur]

Can we get a source on this? And that's not me being ornery here, if we can get some validation this is a very solid metric to use in these discussions, and I want to ensure people see it and use it.

Yes, it was like 8 or so posts before the one you quote, but to reiterate:

In August 2016, 23 months into the lifetiem sales of the 2024 PHB, Mearls said:

Which if you hunt down the tweets, he did specify thst it was more than each individually for their PHBs.

In October 2024, Jes Lanzillo said:

“The English language version of the 2024 Player's Handbook alone achieved in just one month what took nearly two years for the 2014 edition across all language versions available in that timeframe,” she said in a recent video interview. Suffice it to say, therefore, that the new rules are plenty popular, so much so that Wizards has already ordered a second printing.

“This is a huge, kind of unprecedented print run for us,” she added. “I felt that we had aggressively planned for player demand, and the player demand has exceeded it.”

So, to summarize, as of being on sale for 1 month the 2024 PHB had sold as much as the 2014 PHB in the 2 years after September 2014. As of August 2016, within thst timeframe, the 2014 PHB had outsold the lifetime sales of 3E, 3.5, or 4E's PHBs. Ergo, the 2024 PhB outsold them as well, as of 12 months ago. And has kept selling since.

But the bigger success for Hasbro is that the number of people on Beyond has doubled since the time of the OGL crisis.

 

[dave2008]

Can we get a source on this? And that's not me being ornery here, if we can get some validation this is a very solid metric to use in these discussions, and I want to ensure people see it and use it.

I believe several outlets ran the story, and it was discussed here on enworld, but here is from Polygon

Here is the quote from the article:

"The English language version of the 2024 Player's Handbook alone achieved in just one month what took nearly two years for the 2014 edition across all language versions available in that timeframe,..."

 

[AlViking]

Maybe, I don't know. I have no idea why they would be pushing that D&D anniversary is a failure. Financially, it was obvious it would boost sales in the short term.

Maybe they are looking at it more in the 4e way?

4e sold faster than D&D 3e or 3.5 at first, and some would say it was the fastests selling edition for corebook sales ever in it's first few months. In addition, it's internet offering (I think it was estimated) was making a pretty decent chunk of change (80K subscribers I think at it's high point, at ~$10 a pop was 800K a month...and almost 10 Mil a year...but that's nothing when you have a bottom line of needing to make 50 Million or more in order to just be considered minimally successful, and 100 million to be considered good enough to be supported).

As time spread out, sales for 4e fell, and the profit from the online (character creator, etc) also fell somewhat to the point that they started looking at the next step to take. It still made money overall, but not as much as some would have preferred. It was not as popular as 3.X at it's height, and definitely not as popular as 5e is.

I think many consider that a failure today, so...maybe that's how they are looking at it???

More likely some people just can't understand other people liking changes they don't. Therefore, the financial books are cooked. That or some people are just persistent pessimists. We've been reading about the imminent collapse, enshitification, micro transactions, AI ruining everything and other doom and gloom prophecies for over a decade now.

 

[Charlaquin]

Lifetime? No. 1e was the peak and each edition was less (maybe 4e did better then 3.5 but that is it) until the great 5eing. There has been several confirmations of this.

Now comparing the first year of one to the first year of another is a different story. I am sure 2024 sales have great. Will they ever 2014 lifetime sales? Unclear.

No, in terms of initial sales.

I dont' know if that is true. If I recall correctly, Mearls said in the past that 4e initial sales were better than 3e, but Professor DM, recently, said that overall sales of 4e at its peak were less than 3e. I think he said he was quoting Mearls. who also said that 3e were still doing well and they were told by the "suits" to make a 4e. Sales estimates:

5e 2014: 1.6 million
1e: 1.5 million
3e: 1 million
2e: 750K
4e: 300K

Initial sales is what this earnings report concerns, and what I meant has gotten better with each new edition.