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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Arlough" data-source="post: 5876916" data-attributes="member: 79335">I don't know if it is frosting, I think it may be another cake.Consider, with DDi, you get, for a year's worth of subscription, between $72 and $120 from someone.  That is what WotC gets, directly.In books, assuming someone bought all the books (no tiles, screens, miniatures, etc.) available for 2011, that person would have spent between $160 and $275, assuming that they were immune to taxes and had a resist all to shipping costs.  (The other assumption here is that the places advertising the books for the cheapest actually have the books for that price.)Those prices are marked up because the said retailers would like to make money.  So we can assume that WotC is making less than the $182 off that, given that is what it would cost to buy all these from Amazon, pre-tax.Let's figure that Amazon is marking the price up by 10% as a conservative estimate, and that all the retailers that are offering it cheaper are just trying to go out of business.  That puts WotC income at about $160 for a full set of books for 2011.  These are full color books, so figure at least $25 for printing, binding, and shipping, and you come out at $135.Now, most players are not going to buy every book, so let us assume they only buy half. (That's significantly more than any of the players I know would buy, but only a little high if we also assume that every player is a DM in another group.)My estimated WotC revenue off of an average player/DM for a year is now $67.50WotC could take that to the bank and I believe they would slowly go the way of TSR.Or, WotC could offer customers an online service, that includes (basically) a Google search of all the books, a program that helps you create and optimize your character, and a VTT to play on that lets you play over distance, reduces clutter, and is your collection of maps and figs for less than the price of half the books, that makes WotC more money.  Top it off with complete DRM controls (something that they have been very worried about) and the facts that customers have to keep buying to keep using (unlike the books) and subscriptions have proven to be more profitable than single sale due to people being lazy (see Netflix history) and you now have a consistent money stream from a player of about $70 that costs you relatively little to maintain.  As a bonus feature, you have free ad space to sell the next product or idea.Hell, maybe the books are the frosting.While I feel they have missed many opportunities, and their execution has been slipshod at best, I have to argue that DDi is a brilliant idea from a business standpoint.Of course, there is always the possibility that I am wrong.  I think all my assumptions are reasonable, but that in and of itself is an assumption.  And you know what assumptions do, don't you...</blockquote>

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