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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 6229281" data-attributes="member: 7006">I'm with you for the most part here, in that yes, I imagine the bean-counters would prefer a steady stream of revenue each year over 10 years.  The X "soft spot" as you put it.  And this I think goes along with what delricho is also preaching.  I'm pretty sure in one of the other threads I'm saying the exact same thing as you here (which admittedly seems like I'm contradicting myself.)But here is the reason why.  WotC can't reach the X "soft spot".  I don't think it's possible.  And the reason being is that a new edition of D&D is just too popular.  As much as they probably would like to have X per year... the simple fact is that the brand is just too strong to not have a HUGE Year One.  Even if WotC were to cut back on things like marketing and such.  Dungeons & Dragons has just too much market penetration to expect and rely on a "soft release", and then have other people "find the game" over the intervening nine years to satisfy the X soft spot for sales.Yes, Paizo has done that with Pathfinder... because it was a "new" game line with no market penetration.  They've relied and been able to expect the X soft spot for sales because each year more people discover it-- especially in places like Barnes & Noble and other major stores where their shelves actually have a goodly amount of Paizo's product.But since WotC really can't do that with D&D... they can't "undersell" the game like that... their only option is to pimp the crap out of a new edition, bring in as much cash at the top as they possibly can... and ride that bus for several down years until such time as they can feasible pull out another cash cow core release five years down the line.  It'd be like Marvel not advertising Avengers 2 at all-- it's still going to make $150 million regardless just because of the number of people who know and care that it's coming... it just might not make the $400 million it might've been capable of.  So they might as well pimp it as hard as they can to try and reach it.I think it's the only way they can consistently bring in as much money as possible to their D&D RPG line.  And like you said Giltonio... if that meant actually releasing a new edition every year that brought in 20X?  You can be darn sure they would do it, complaints from the proletariat be damned.</blockquote>

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