D&D 5E Brand Vs RPG

[delericho]

Some of those are a little bit higher than the info I was using but a few match up with what others have said. I had seen the 2E figures before an never added up the 1E books. 1E would be the biggest D&D version ever based on those numbers (I thought it was the Red Boxed set).

https://www.acaeum.com/library/printrun.html

Yeah, I've heard previously that the B/X Basic Set was the best-selling version ever. Though it's possible that it's actually the case that it was the "Red Box", but that that's actually split between the B/X and BECMI versions - thus "splitting the vote" sufficiently that neither quite takes the title alone.

Alternately, it's likely that all these approximations have been at least a little skewed by time.

 

[Shasarak]

Here's my link from last time this came up.

I am confidant that 5e will be able to get at least a million units sold.

 

[delericho]

I am confidant that 5e will be able to get at least a million units sold.

I guess we'll see. Personally, I'd be inclined to think that if it's not most of the way there already, it probably won't make it.

 

[Azurewraith]

I am confidant that 5e will be able to get at least a million units sold.

Itll be interesting to see the funny thing about 5e is i have no strong feelings for or against it nor can i pin point what i like or dislike about the system it seems to leave me completely void

 

[Jester David]

Here's my link from last time this came up.

Odd. The numbers don't really match the Mona numbers.

It also really makes 5e look very unsuccessful. If the bar is 300k per month then 5e is a colossal failure. Unless book and gaming stores were just ordering a year's worth of books at a time.

--edit--
On second though... how the eff could they sell that many? I mean physically. Was the first print run 300k+? That'd be a huge print run for a book expected to sell a million copies over years and years. And the company was just taking over from TSR and saw the dangers of over printing books in the hopes of selling them later.
WotC has gone through four print runs of the 5e PHB already, and they likely suspected it would do well. So it doesn't seem like they're wont to print massive runs for potential savings.

 

[delericho]

Odd. The numbers don't really match the Mona numbers.

It also really makes 5e look very unsuccessful. If the bar is 300k per month then 5e is a colossal failure. Unless book and gaming stores were just ordering a year's worth of books at a time.

Note that it's not "300k per month", it's "there was one month in which they sold 300k"! (Presumably the month immediately after launch.)

 

[innerdude]

I'm probably going to get excoriated for saying this, but so be it.....

The power of the D&D "brand" is overwhelmingly overstated. To the average Joe or Jane Public, it's not even the most recognizable "fantasy adventure" brand, as that title would be held by Skyrim, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, or World of Warcraft in some order. Since Neverwinter Nights 2 was released in 2006, I can't think of a single product--tabletop, digital, or otherwise--that I either bought or considered buying simply because it had the D&D logo blazoned across the packaging.

Consider --- Sword Coast Legends is getting absolutely destroyed in the marketplace by "off brand" competitors Pillars of Eternity and Divinity: Original Sin. In the case of Pillars of Eternity, it's not even based on an existing IP of any kind. It's a completely new fantasy world. Consider also Dungeons and Dragons Online (DDO) and Neverwinter Online --- they've been moderately successful, but are decidedly a niche within a niche in the overall MMO scene.

Sure, the D&D 5e tabletop game has been an unqualified success. But if the goal is to "monetize the brand" in the same way as say, Marvel Comics, in terms of large-scale "branding" the RPG itself does very little to achieve that goal.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I am confidant that 5e will be able to get at least a million units sold.

No reason it shouldn't. Lesser games have done so. WoD had moved over a million books by 1996, for instance.

 

[Zardnaar]

Odd. The numbers don't really match the Mona numbers.

It also really makes 5e look very unsuccessful. If the bar is 300k per month then 5e is a colossal failure. Unless book and gaming stores were just ordering a year's worth of books at a time.

--edit--
On second though... how the eff could they sell that many? I mean physically. Was the first print run 300k+? That'd be a huge print run for a book expected to sell a million copies over years and years. And the company was just taking over from TSR and saw the dangers of over printing books in the hopes of selling them later.
WotC has gone through four print runs of the 5e PHB already, and they likely suspected it would do well. So it doesn't seem like they're wont to print massive runs for potential savings.

Sean K Teynolds wrote about it in 2002 and confirmed they did a 6 figure print run in order to get the $20 price of the 3.0 PHB. Future print runs retailed for $30. From memory they also did a survey in 1999 and IIRC they estimated there were several million D&D players.

Its been 15 years and Paizo is still doing Pathfinder which still sells well and is confirmed to have broken the $10 million in revenue mark and Paizo only got a fraction of the 3E D&D player base. People think of 3.5 as the definitive version of 3E but 3.0 outsold 3.5 something like 3-1 or 4-1.

That whole d20 thing a few years back (until the bubble burst in 2004). It was kind of massive (still is big now).

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

No reason it shouldn't. Lesser games have done so. WoD had moved over a million books by 1996, for instance.

That's an obnoxious way to phrase that.