Fine. We'll do this. Again.
As I have told you before (
repeatedly) the
27 million is not for D&D. It's for TSR.
Which is like pointing out the revenue for WotC in 2004 and saying 5e isn't doing as well as 3e as WotC made more money then than RPGs did now.
(The 27 million was also *projected*. And they were wrong.)
TSR had numerous games for sale with multiple RPG lines in 1983 (Top Secret, Boot Hill, Gamma World, Gangbusters, and Star Frontiers) and many board games, including the large hit Dungeon! Plus Dragon magazine, which was only somewhat related to D&D at the time.
Also keep in mind to sobering facts. First, TSR was run by a bunch or random non-businessmen who were in no way accountants. Do you think their books were accurate? They accidentally doubled their revenue for a period.
Looking at the numbers, the Wall Street Journal pegged sales at $2.3M, 8.7, 14, and 22 for '79 through '82.
(Again, I return your attention to the *projection* of $27M, which was completely wrong.)
Additionally, those sales were a brief spike. The D&D surge of 1979-1983. Sales were below expectations in '82 by $5M, and in 1983 sales were only $26.7M, as growth stalled before declining. (TSR had been expecting $45 million in 1983, for some reason ignoring the missed expectations of '82.)
Following which, sales steadily declined and TSR stumbled around making increasingly poor decisions.
Now, let's do some math. Adding up the five known figures we get a total of $73.7 million for TSR for 1979-1983. Which is AD&D, Basic D&D, and all their other RPGs, wargames, and board games. (Dragon Magazine alone would be pulling in $720,000 annually.)
Respectable.
Putting the numbers into a inflation calculator and that's and impressive $198,000,000. Decent.
Let's return to the ICv2 figures.
The role-playing game industry was $15 million in 2013, when D&D wasn't releasing anything major. That's Pathfinder at its height (it's sales only decline meanwhile) and no other major retail challengers.
So the $10 million boost between 2013 and 2015 is pretty much D&D. (We can assuming it was 75% that in 2014, with six to sell 5e but the high selling core books.)
So a ballpark is $7.5M, 10, 20, 30, 40. For a total of $107,500,000. Which is probably *mostly* all D&D.
But, you say, that's less than $198M. True. But I'm not including any board games or other products in that. WotC probably makes an eff-tonne in licencing that wouldn't be included in the totals. Again, TSR sold a
lot of other products.
And, this is key,
even if the $198M was all D&D, it would be divided between AD&D and Basic.
So, is D&D making more money than it was in 1982? Adjusted for inflation, probably not. But it's probably pretty darn close.
Amusingly, it made comparable money in 2014 as 1979 and in 2015 and in 1980. But the spike of '81 and '82 level 2016-17 behind.
But... while D&D plateaued in 1982, 5e has continued to grow steadily in 2018. At this steady rate of growth, D&D passes TSR's money earned over the same period of years by 2021. And even if 5e slows, that still only delays things by a couple years. At this point, it's pretty much inevitable that 5e will make more total money, adjusted for inflation, than early 1980s TSR. All WotC has to do is not collapse and have a huge fight over management leading to bankruptcy.
And, again, that's all of TSR
Interestingly, the article linked above pegs the Basic Set's sales at 12,000 copies a month. Impressive. But still less than the 5e PHB's 15,000 per month... on Amazon alone.
So 5e's PHB has undoubtedly sold
more copies than either the 1e PHB or the D&D Basic set. So while 5e cannot currently match the impressive sales spike of D&D Basic AND AD&D 1e
combined, it more than exceeds sales of both individually.
I look forward to you continuing to ignore all this, and maintaining that D&D individually made $27 million in 1982 and how the 1e PHB outsold the current one.
