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A new Edition/Iteration of D&D is really necessary?
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<blockquote data-quote="delericho" data-source="post: 5801436" data-attributes="member: 22424"><p>I don't have a citation. I drew a reasoned conclusion from the known facts.</p><p></p><p>With the vastly reduced product load of the last year, coupled with the marked reduction in DDI output, I concluded some time ago that 4e was in trouble.</p><p></p><p>The counter-argument to that was always the regular income from DDI subscriptions. But the known DDI subscriber base was circa 60k, barely more than Dragon at the time it was shipped out to Paizo - and <em>that</em> was done because WotC had decided it wasn't profitable enough to be worth their while. Since the costs of DDI are significantly more than they were for Dragon (given that they need to produce the Dragon material <em>and</em> the Dungeon material, <em>and</em> the tools, <em>and</em> the errata/revisions, <em>and</em> the server costs...), and especially given the sunk costs of having to re-do pretty much all the tools, and given that DDI subscriptions canibalised print product sales (especially the normally reliable splatbooks) in a way that Dragon never did, it seemed obvious that 60k subscribers wasn't really enough. Of course, there were always the 'hidden' DDI subscribers, of whom there were an unknown number.</p><p></p><p>But then Ryan Dancey provided yet more information, notably the rosetta stone of Hasbro's $50M target - a target that basically no RPG company could achieve. And given the real-world tragedy that struck the software team at exactly the wrong time, it seemed even less likely.</p><p></p><p>So you'll have to forgive me, but I put all that together, plus the announcement of 5e so soon, and came up with "4e failed under the weight of impossible expectations."</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Doing a new edition now is not a good move. It's way too soon. At best, this represents a huge risk. So if it's purely about making more money than a successful 4e, they would have to be <em>awfully</em> sure of themselves.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="delericho, post: 5801436, member: 22424"] I don't have a citation. I drew a reasoned conclusion from the known facts. With the vastly reduced product load of the last year, coupled with the marked reduction in DDI output, I concluded some time ago that 4e was in trouble. The counter-argument to that was always the regular income from DDI subscriptions. But the known DDI subscriber base was circa 60k, barely more than Dragon at the time it was shipped out to Paizo - and [i]that[/i] was done because WotC had decided it wasn't profitable enough to be worth their while. Since the costs of DDI are significantly more than they were for Dragon (given that they need to produce the Dragon material [i]and[/i] the Dungeon material, [i]and[/i] the tools, [i]and[/i] the errata/revisions, [i]and[/i] the server costs...), and especially given the sunk costs of having to re-do pretty much all the tools, and given that DDI subscriptions canibalised print product sales (especially the normally reliable splatbooks) in a way that Dragon never did, it seemed obvious that 60k subscribers wasn't really enough. Of course, there were always the 'hidden' DDI subscribers, of whom there were an unknown number. But then Ryan Dancey provided yet more information, notably the rosetta stone of Hasbro's $50M target - a target that basically no RPG company could achieve. And given the real-world tragedy that struck the software team at exactly the wrong time, it seemed even less likely. So you'll have to forgive me, but I put all that together, plus the announcement of 5e so soon, and came up with "4e failed under the weight of impossible expectations." Doing a new edition now is not a good move. It's way too soon. At best, this represents a huge risk. So if it's purely about making more money than a successful 4e, they would have to be [i]awfully[/i] sure of themselves. [/QUOTE]
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