D&D 5E Are D&D sales declining? Teos Abadia takes a look.

[DarkCrisis]

I thought it was being mothballed

 

[Zardnaar]

Also existing products, including those already sold but out there among the customer base, are among the things people can choose. So after a while that customer product acquisition gets spread over a wider range of products.

I wonder if there is a way to map this to the growing number of available products and see if that has had a measurable impact.

Not sure. Older products will sell more due to being available longer.

But that video did break down sales I first few weeks for more direct comparison. Newer adventures aren't selling that well comparatively to even 2-3 years ago.

Overall brand I didn't look at to much. The video was around 2 hours iirc and I watched all of it.

I'm a whale own 30 odd books maybe more and personally I've slowed my purchases way down.

 

[LordEntrails]

But that video did break down sales I first few weeks for more direct comparison. Newer adventures aren't selling that well comparatively to even 2-3 years ago.

But are overall adventure sales up?
I.e. say if LMOP sold 100 the first period. But now Planescape only sold 60 in that same period, ok. But total adventure sales (Planscape, LMOP, WDDH, etc) are at 300, then is that really a decline?
(I don't know what they data says.)

 

[darjr]

But are overall adventure sales up?
I.e. say if LMOP sold 100 the first period. But now Planescape only sold 60 in that same period, ok. But total adventure sales (Planscape, LMOP, WDDH, etc) are at 300, then is that really a decline?
(I don't know what they data says.)

Good question!

 

[mamba]

But are overall adventure sales up?

yes, the article shows that. Total sales are up, average sales per title are down, I assume both in part because there are more adventures per year.

This is true for adventures, overall D&D sales per product are down however, peaked in 2020, for the first 4, 12 and 52 weeks.

 

[Stormonu]

Just what I've seen from my lifetime (about 50 years that I can remember things), most things don't usually have a shelf life of great popularity beyond two years. Big fans will hang around for about 5 years, but it takes dedicated fans to hit or exceed the 10 year mark - and those are relatively rare.

You can extend the popularity of some things by recycling them every couple of years and getting a new fanbase in (like GW tends to do). I've generally see companies get sales bumps by bringing things back around 10 years down the road when most folks have forgotten and sold off their old stuff and see it return. These bumps usually only last a few months at best and unless new stuff gets churned out with the return, it quickly goes away again.

I have to say, I think this is the longest we've seen any edition of D&D survive unchanged, and even it is getting a fresh coat of paint next year. If what I've seen in the past holds, we'll see a big bump when the new core books drop, but then a huge drop-off within about six months - and a year later most folks would be surprised the game is still being sold.

 

[Clint_L]

It's a good article, but as many have commented it seems very odd to conclude that sales for D&D are in a slow decline without factoring in digital sales. Sales of physical books in general are in a slow decline, thanks to digital.

 

[Alphastream]

Out of curiosity, did any of the switchers -- such as to pathfinder -- stick?

The scale of D&D is entirely different than for other RPGs. Whether they stick or not is important to the other RPGs, not to D&D. Some for sure did, some for sure didn't, but nothing in the data shows an impact - as expected.

D&D doesn't compete with other RPGs. D&D competes with other forms of entertainment. People coming and going is part of what is just expected to happen with the brand. What is important to D&D long term is to draw more and more people into the brand (whether the game or BG3 or t-shirts or the movie).

I don't say this to take away from the OGL fiasco, which was monumental and at one point the number one issue at Hasbro to resolve. Goodwill does matter, the image does matter. It matters to us, to everyday designers at D&D, and to the executives. But it's not about losing a few hundred gamers to another game. It's about the larger effects on audiences across all levels of casual to hardcore. In the short term, having D&D Beyond subscribers drop was a big deal because of the desire to show return on that investment and the potential for future growth.

 

[Alphastream]

Is it reasonable to expect new products to have the same sales as the original/core products? i.e. Do we really expect a character options book (such as Tasha's etc) to sell as many as the core PHB? Or the twentieth adventure to sell as many as the first adventure? I don't think that is reasonable. The first books (of each type) should be expected to sell more as they are designed to appeal to the core demographic, while subsequent books (and adventures) are looking to fill in the gaps. Such as LMOP is a solid adventure. Just about everyone can use this at some point in there gaming 'career', but Strixhaven or spelljammer? No, they are only going to be of interest to a subset. There is still money in that subset, but not as much as for a core product.

Is that a valid intepretation of the data?

The normal expectation would be for each successive release to do worse than the prior ones and for sure to do worse than core books and similar products. A starter set (typically sold at a loss) should sell better than an accessory, for example. There are always some surprises (if we look at 2E data from Ben Riggs, some products do really well for a while, but most do worse than previous releases).

5E has given us many surprises. First, that books were increasing in sales over time. That on month x in year 2 you might have y sales, and then the same month in year 5 you could have MORE sales? That's wild. And it's what many 5E books have done, both core and other books.

5E also shows some more recent books having huge initial releases, way beyond what you would expect. Tasha's just explodes with initial sales, even if it may not quite catch up to Xanathar's with its growth over time. Spelljammer with huge initial sales... even if folks decide it isn't a great product and sales slow, those initial sales were amazing.

What we also see is that this incredible growth is slowing. So, this isn't a situation where at year 10 5E is ever stronger, the way it was at year 5. That is important for our whole hobby to note. Because, look, maybe the same is true of 3rd party products. For sure, the DMs Guild sales are slower. And we have seen many 5E 3rd party publishers see some decline on Kickstarter (10% is a number thrown around, for what it is worth; varies by publisher). So, maybe it is all going out of overdrive and into simply a strong good place. Or maybe it will slow further. We don't know. But 5E new products are selling fewer copies in the BookScan data. All of which would encourage WotC to try new approaches and revenue streams, because corporations are more than a bit addicted to growth.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

There's another reason for slightly softer sales on recent releases as well: Many of them have not reviewed particularly well (Spelljammer probably being the worst) and are a bit of a departure from the norm (like Tales from the Golden Vault). Phandelver is more "normal" AND is doing pretty well (but it's early yet for that project, AND it's 1/3 reprint, which probably negatively effects it, even if it's reprint of something much loved). This and the increase to MSRP, which effects sales negatively when it's first introduced, but will eventually "feel" normal as time goes on.

Hopefully Planescape will review well.