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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Staffan" data-source="post: 8364535" data-attributes="member: 907">With Star Wars, it's probably that the low-hanging fruit has already been picked. They did not just one but three RPGs, each with six splat books covering the classes for that particular incarnation and then did a few adventures and other sourcebooks. They even followed that up with era books for using the different RPGs together but in eras other than the one the main books focus on (between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back), as well as books collecting bits and bobs from all the other books (spaceships, gear, and such). Sure, they could do more, but that would mean investing more money for a lower rate of return.IME, it's fairly rare for licensed RPGs to be actively supported for a long time, and moreso in the modern day. The One Ring is very much an exception – and even there, Cubicle 7 stepped away from it and/or lost the license. But we're not likely to see anything close to the product lines for 80s Marvel Super Heroes, Middle-Earth Role-Playing, or Star Wars.The main difference between a licensed game and one you're doing yourself is that you're paying a fee for the licensed game. This would generally be in the form of $X per year (or for N years) plus $Y (or Y% royalties) per product. For a game you own, it can make economic sense to support it with supplements for a long time, both because the supplements are (hopefully) self-sustaining and because they drive core book sales – and core book sales are, after all, like free money. But when you're also paying a license fee, core book sales aren't free money anymore, because the license costs money to keep going and eventually you'll hit the point where you say "Nah, my money's better spent on other things" and cancel the license. That doesn't mean it was a bad license, just that licensed games generally aren't sustainable.</blockquote>

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