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<blockquote data-quote="delericho" data-source="post: 6627142" data-attributes="member: 22424">Actually, I'm not convinced WotC are particularly bothered about sales of RPG books at all. Sure, they'd rather have them than not, but I suspect they're more interested in getting people playing. Because if they can say &quot;we have 8 million regular players&quot;, that's a much more attractive licensing proposition than &quot;we have 1 million regular players&quot;.Ah, but there's the rub - D&amp;D is only more niche in percentage terms, and that only because the potential market is now so much bigger.A few years ago, WotC did a presentation at which they gave a figure for their current player base (which was either 1 or 6 million), and at which they said there were ~20 million people who had ever played. D&amp;D has always been tiny, even at the heights of the fad in the 80s.The difference being that back then D&amp;D was a major player in a tiny &quot;geek culture&quot;, whereas now it's a tiny player in a &quot;geek culture&quot; that has somehow become huge, what with the success of the LotR films, the endless superhero films, &quot;Big Bang Theory&quot;, WoW having 7 million monthly subscribers (down from 10m recently), and so on.D&amp;D isn't becoming more niche. It's staying the same size. It's just that the niche has become a huge gaping chasm.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="delericho, post: 6627142, member: 22424"] Actually, I'm not convinced WotC are particularly bothered about sales of RPG books at all. Sure, they'd rather have them than not, but I suspect they're more interested in getting people playing. Because if they can say "we have 8 million regular players", that's a much more attractive licensing proposition than "we have 1 million regular players". Ah, but there's the rub - D&D is only more niche in percentage terms, and that only because the potential market is now so much bigger. A few years ago, WotC did a presentation at which they gave a figure for their current player base (which was either 1 or 6 million), and at which they said there were ~20 million people who had [i]ever[/i] played. D&D has [i]always[/i] been tiny, even at the heights of the fad in the 80s. The difference being that back then D&D was a major player in a tiny "geek culture", whereas now it's a tiny player in a "geek culture" that has somehow become [i]huge[/i], what with the success of the LotR films, the endless superhero films, "Big Bang Theory", WoW having 7 million monthly subscribers (down from 10m recently), and so on. D&D isn't becoming more niche. It's staying the same size. It's just that the niche has become a huge gaping chasm. [/QUOTE]

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