Cost of Core Books PDFs

[Vayden]

Hey, the Rouse is posting again! Scott - is there any way you can get an RSS feed or something like that set specifically for the errata, so that we can find out when it updates? Updates there don't show up on the normal WotC D&D RSS.

Edit for clarity: I'm just talking about this page (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/updates), not the PDFs.

 

[Fifth Element]

It is financially irresponsible if your bottom line philosophy is "Pay a fair price for a fair days work". To me, that means a 2 to 300% mark up is fair. Beyond that it is excessive and greedy.

So people who are fine with paying excessive and greedy, great. I'll continue to insist on my definition of "fair".

To me your saying "Get overpaid by however much you can get away with" is acceptable. For you it apparently is. For me it isn't.

How do you make any buying decisions? There's no way you know the cost, markup and profit characteristics of everything you buy. How do you know if you're paying a "fair" price?

You seem to be denigrating those who make their buying decisions like this: "I really like the advantages that a PDF offers over a print product, and the disadvantages are irrelevant to me. I find $25 to be a reasonable price to pay, given the amount of enjoyment I will receive." Most people make buying decisions based on their own wants, needs, and preferences, not on the financial results of the company selling the things, and it is a perfectly reasonable way to make such decisions.

And ultimately, you don't know the true cost of the 4E PDFs anyway, because as stated above, the development costs of 4E (which we know to be in the millions of dollars) are rightly allocated among all versions of the books sold. There is no marginal cost of producing a PDF, but there are enormous overhead and development costs to be considered.

 

[malraux]

Thanks for the reply. I was trying to use a professional colour laser printer and fiery combination, and used Adobe reader 6 and Adobe Professional 8, also the same problem with printing to PDF which often solves similar problems. The interesting thing was it was only 1 page in the MM that was a problem.
Never had a similar problem happen before, and I work in a print room.

What I always found strange was that I never got an out of memory error, just a printer freezing. I dunno what the actual problem is, but I hope that fixed it.

 

[sjmiller]

Guys Errata will happen. The game is a month old. We're working on it.

Scott, as I said, I just thought it was a mistake to offer the pdfs without the errata. Since the errata was known and posted at the WotC site several weeks before the pdfs were offered for sale, one would have naturally assumed that the new pdfs would incorporate the known errata. Since the information on the sale site does not mention that the errata is not included, I at least would have assumed it would be. It's how I have operated with several large businesses I have worked for in the past. Yes, businesses larger than WotC, in case you were wondering.

I am not trying to give you a hard time, or berate you, I am just saying I disagree with you on this.

 

[Dire Bare]

Guys Errata will happen. The game is a month old. We're working on it.

We demand absolute perfection! Anything less is unacceptable! We don't care how unreasonable our requests might be, or how little we understand the publishing business and the rpg business.

You should have had the 4e PDFs available the day after launch with links, bookmarks, music, video and completely errated. A full month has gone by, for Gygax's sake!

 

[Dire Bare]

Scott, as I said, I just thought it was a mistake to offer the pdfs without the errata. Since the errata was known and posted at the WotC site several weeks before the pdfs were offered for sale, one would have naturally assumed that the new pdfs would incorporate the known errata. Since the information on the sale site does not mention that the errata is not included, I at least would have assumed it would be. It's how I have operated with several large businesses I have worked for in the past. Yes, businesses larger than WotC, in case you were wondering.

I am not trying to give you a hard time, or berate you, I am just saying I disagree with you on this.

"Naturally assumed?" The vast majority, if not all, of the PDF releases from the big guys (WotC, White Wolf, etc) have been the exact same files as the printed versions. Errata has been incorporated when new print relesases have been put together. Why would one "naturally assume" WotC would buck the trend and do differently?

I would of course love it if every time WotC became aware of errata that they update the PDFs, but I also feel that expecting them to do so is unrealistic. You are being overly harsh on WotC for simply business as usual.

 

[questing gm]

So the pdfs as of now (July 13) are not errataed yet?

(Sorry for the off topic, guys )

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

So the pdfs as of now (July 13) are not errataed yet?

(Sorry for the off topic, guys )

They are not errated yet. They will be eventually, but for the moment, you gain no "improved rules text" from buying it now, and if you're fine with the print version (or no version at all), you don't need to buy them yet, and can plan them into your budget at a later point.

 

[Pinotage]

Guys Errata will happen. The game is a month old. We're working on it.

Thanks, Scott! It's great to know this will happen. I'm not in any hurry, but it makes owning these pdfs much sweeter!

Pinotage

 

[malraux]

Guys Errata will happen. The game is a month old. We're working on it.

Yeah, but I bet you are wasting precious time with something as superfluous as sleep and family.