D&D 4E 4e price increase?

[Hella_Tellah]

D&D 4e is available at the price WOTC chooses to sell it at - not some 'fair' price that you've plucked out of thin air in your fantasy world.

Well, no, Imaro really does have a point; s/he's not fantasizing. The market will find a fair value for the product that will sell off all of the stock eventually. If 4e is profoundly unpopular, that fair value may be $5 off the bargain rack, and Wizards will stop producing 4th Edition. Wizards has priced the system (so rumor has it) at $120, and they believe they'll sell all their stock at that price.

 

[Jack99]

I don't think this is true. The strength of currencies like the Canadian and Aussie dollar are not transalting to the sale price. We've been over the why's and such in other threads. IIRC Melbournes FLGS was selling the 3.0 books for $30.00 Aus. I guarantee we will not be paying less than this when 4.0 hits our shores dispite our apparent parity with the US dollar.

It is true for some countries. Unless something changes dramatically with the dollar, 4e PHB at $40 should be just about the same price in danish crowns as the 3.0 PHB at $30.

$1 was 8 dkr around when 3e came out, ie the PHB cost 240 dkr roughly, now $1 is 5 dkr, so a $40 PHB will cost 200 dkr.

FTW! 4e will by far be the cheapest edition yet

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Yeah, I'm not sure that's a comparison we should make. I'm fairly certain that if you polled the consuming public about which got played more frequently -- tabletop RPGs or video games -- the answer would be, unequivocally, video games.

I know that, in the past five years, I've easily spent more time with video games. If this holds true for most other (which, again, I suspect that it does), $120 spent on video games is an investment that sees much more return than $120 spent on books.

That's a bit of an off comparison.

What was actually being compared was two video games vs the three core books.

There are only two games I can think of that in my group of friends has had any near the longevity of 3.X:

Halo 2

World of Warcraft.

And of those two WoW will exceed the cost of 3.X on its own as soon as it hits five months.

 

[Jack99]

Tell me if my math is wrong… been a long time since math class. This is a real life example of my group of friends compared to an average movie.

D&D: 7 people. 7 player’s handbooks, 1 dmg, 1mm at $40 each is $360. We play about 20 times a year for about 6 hours each time. So 120 hours. $360 divided by 120 hours is $3/hour.
Movie: $8 for 2 hours is $4 per hour.

That looks like a no brainer to me. Plus I can talk to people while I play instead of sitting in a dark room being antisocial.

Your math is wrong

you play 120 hours, so its $3 dollar/per hour for 7 ppl.. so its 42c per hour playing dnd, quite a bit less than going to the cinema

 

[Imaro]

Unfortunately for you, back in the real world, where real people live and where real world economics apply, option 5 isn't actually available.

D&D 4e is available at the price WOTC chooses to sell it at - not some 'fair' price that you've plucked out of thin air in your fantasy world.

Buy it. Or don't buy it. Your choice.

Uh...thanks for filling me in on the "real world". As far as the prices I "plucked out of thin air"...uhm..I didn't. If you took the time to read my other posts, you'd see they were based on other comparable roleplaying game books.

And as for your last three sentence fragments...Duh. Doesn't mean I can't have an opinion on it. By the way, you know it is possible to price outside the majority of your target market's range and do poorly, right? Check out the Playstation 3 for an example of this. How much has the price dropped since it released? So I guess it is kind of possible to force a company to give it's consumers a "fair price"

 

[Vigilance]

Aww, be fair. If economic theory didn't apply to discretionary spending, we'd have no need for marketing departments!

It's completely reasonable to ask if a product will make you $120 happier--that's the only reasonable way to examine any purchase.

And this is exactly the argument I'm making. If 4e is worth 120 bucks to me, I'll buy it.

As for economic theory, I don't think it does apply (much) to things like RPG books. As you pointed out, marketing can make you lose sight of the cost.

Look at prices early adopters are willing to pay for things like video game consoles. Not only are the prices higher from the company (the PS2 started out at 299, it's now down to 129) but then speculators successfully raise them HIGHER.

People were paying well above retail MSRP for the 360 early on and they still are for the Wii. Why would they do something so irrational? Because they WANT it. The market has not yet exhausted its supply of people willing to pay $481 for a Wii (the lowest price I could find just now at Amazon).

I think desire is THE most important economic factor for something as unnecessary to our daily lives as RPG books and video game consoles.

 

[Hella_Tellah]

Check out the Playstation 3 for an example of this. How much has the price dropped since it released? So I guess it is kind of possible to force a company to give it's consumers a "fair price"

Perfect example. That's the market economy at work, baby. I wouldn't say that consumers forced Sony to do anything, but I would say that they didn't do their homework on researching the market.

You may be right about 4e's price; Wizards might have priced themselves out of the market on this one. I think it's a smart price point, though, given brand loyalty, the higher average income of early adopters, etc. I also think they'll drop the price in some manner a few months later to pick up more of the market, and I predict it will be with a bargain-priced box set. At least, that's what I would do.

 

[Desdichado]

I did post a comparison that I think is relevant above howver - the core books for 4e will cost me less than a meal for my family in a local restaurant.

Wow. Really? Do you have like thirty kids or something?

Me? I'm not complaining about the price. I'm not excited about $35/book, but it's hardly surprising. How much have most of the splatbooks we've gotten the last few years cost? Yeah, that's what I thought. Right in that ballpark, depending on the pagecount.

I don't understand the angst. If where you fall on the demand curve says that $120 for the basic three books means you'll still buy them, then do so and quit whining. If not, then don't and quit whining.

 

[Hella_Tellah]

And this is exactly the argument I'm making. If 4e is worth 120 bucks to me, I'll buy it.

As for economic theory, I don't think it does apply (much) to things like RPG books. As you pointed out, marketing can make you lose sight of the cost.

Look at prices early adopters are willing to pay for things like video game consoles. Not only are the prices higher from the company (the PS2 started out at 299, it's now down to 129) but then speculators successfully raise them HIGHER.

People were paying well above retail MSRP for the 360 early on and they still are for the Wii. Why would they do something so irrational? Because they WANT it. The market has not yet exhausted its supply of people willing to pay $481 for a Wii (the lowest price I could find just now at Amazon).

I think desire is THE most important economic factor for something as unnecessary to our daily lives as RPG books and video game consoles.

Yeah, but all of that is described easily by mainstream economic theory. None of the three game companies produced enough consoles to meet demand, so there was a shortage. In a shortage, eager consumers pay more through a secondary market, but they still won't pay more than the amount by which they estimate the product will make them happy. That estimate might be extraordinarily high, and might be inaccurate, but that doesn't matter for measuring the initial effects on the market--that's only a concern for the consumer's CPA.

The spot where economics falters is in assuming that consumers can predict their happiness rationally, even though we know that humans are terrible at predicting their future happiness. Basic supply and demand doesn't really require that consumers be rational, necessarily; it merely models their assumptions of how happy a product will make them. And you know what happens when you assume.

 

[Imaro]

Perfect example. That's the market economy at work, baby. I wouldn't say that consumers forced Sony to do anything, but I would say that they didn't do their homework on researching the market.

You may be right about 4e's price; Wizards might have priced themselves out of the market on this one. I think it's a smart price point, though, given brand loyalty, the higher average income of early adopters, etc. I also think they'll drop the price in some manner a few months later to pick up more of the market, and I predict it will be with a bargain-priced box set. At least, that's what I would do.

I agree with your second paragraph, and the only hiccup I see is the "brand loyalty" causing a problem since I get the impression D&D 4e is changing alot of things that may be components of this loyalty. It may or may not (along with the price) be enough to adversely affect sales. I know I pre-ordered 3e, but I really haven't been pulled in enough to do the same for 4e yet (this is partly due to me exploring other systems right now), I guess we'll see how it all pans out.