3000 is at the peak of the spike. But it’s also the minimum (it’s arrived at by figuring out the rank or a book selling 1 copy and then building up). Still, during non-peaks the game might only be selling 2000 or even 1000 copies. Or less.
But that’s amazon.com only, and isn’t including game stores or box stores.
5e has undoubtedly sold well over a million copies. With 9 million people playing the game, even if only 15% of players have purchased a book that’s well over a million.
Also keep in mind that Mearls comments on how 5e outsold 3e back in August of 2016.
Eighteen months ago. Even if it had just maintained its sales it would have likely passed 1e. Instead, it’s been eighteen months of the game selling better and better.
Mearls likely hasn't commented on 1e or B/X for a couple reasons.
1) He doesn’t need to. 5e is a hit. He doesn’t need to prove it to anyone.
2) He doesn’t have the numbers. Even at the time he commented how sales from 1e were “
spotty”.
I just think people like to get carried away. If you adjust the old TSR figures for inlfation at its height D&D was twice the size of the current RPG market at its peak and for several years was around the same size (81-83 or so).
Even with a 30% drop in 84 which wrecked them (300 odd staff does that) its still bigger than the entire modern RPG market.
Thats why I am sceptical and thats before they starting spamming out stuff to pay the bills. Its plausible D&D has sold a million or 1.5 million or whatever but its not guaranteed.
Mistwell said that take away he big spikes for sales and there is probably a big drop off between the books higher up the ilists, I would assume its like movies Xanaathars was bonkers for a month or so and Mearls said it was the fastest selling D&D book *beating the PHB IDK?) but that lasted a month or so.
I highly doubt they are selling 3k books every day, hell We have 3 of the,m probably get a 4th an at $20 a pop on Amazon I would have more.
Even a few hundred sales a day with a nice big spike at the front end of an edition spread over a long enough time will get there. 100 a day is 36k a year roughly so 500 a day is 150k, 1000 a day is 365k average (more than the lifetime sales of 3.5). If they were selling that many I think the RPG market would be bigger.
Its selling well, gangbusters even but when some posters are throwing around 3 million, or taking the high point of an editions sales and extrapolating it over a longer time frame its funny. 3.0 sold 300k in the 1st month apparently, in 3 years it means they sold 10 million ZOMG lol.
I guess to hit 9 million players they assumed an attach rate or 5-1 or whatever per PHB per group. Hell our group has a PHB each + 1 extra due to cheap Amazon prices and only 1 of us (me) is a hardcore D&D collector. Since I doubt they have sold 9 million PHB they have assumed some amount of people play D&D per PHB or whatever but if our group is not that exceptional their numbers are going to be very very wrong.
Assuming Danceys figures he gave out years ago are somewhere in the ballpark (he tends to be 15%-20% higher than others). They were.
1E Million+
Red Box 1-1.5 milliojn
2E 750k
3.0 500k+
3.5 250-350k
IIRC his post is buried on the Giant in the Playground forums. The bar is not that high to beat for the WotC editions.
On the forums people claimed 4E outsold 3E, never seen any supporting evidence for it (IIRC they claimed out outsold 3.5 on presales). 3.5 was not a good selling edition, 3.0 looks low but only had slightly less than 3 year shelf life.
Don't get me wrong I think it great that D&D is doing well but with things like 3 and 9 million being thrown around context is important. Whats D&D rankings on Amazon right now and is there a sale on? Even 100 per day wil give you tens of thousands sold per year.
