NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="OB1" data-source="post: 8692319" data-attributes="member: 6796241">Oh, they'll be happy to sell the Core 3 to existing players as well (and it will, if for nothing else than being labeled the 50AE) , it just won't be necessary to purchase them to continue playing the other 4-6 books they publish per year.  The purchase of those books depends entirely on the number of people who have the compatible Core OS.  They also get to continue selling the 50 existing supplements to new players, without spending a dime on development.  Instead, if they are spending minimally on development of 50AE (because they are primarily recycling popular options from existing books) as a way to make the game more appealing to new players (by including popular options that don't require purchasing several additional books right off the bat and are more appealing to a younger generation) they get to continue selling both old and new supplemental product to a large base.On the other hand, if all of the existing product becomes obsolete with 50AE, WotC now has to sell the new Core to a large percentage of the existing base in order to continue selling new supplements at the same rate they are now.  Again, we see the same thing when a new video game console hits the market.  Sales for games exclusive to that console lag behind for years from the height of the previous console.  It takes a huge marketing effort and a lot of patience by the console developer to make the pay off for switching consoles worth it, part of which is driven by competition from other console makers.  But D&D doesn't currently have any real competition pressure to force them to make such a radical change.  Their business decision should be based on how to sell more books per year (Core plus old/new supplements).  Old supplements return more margin than new ones (since their development costs have already been accounted for).  Finally, there is a lot of risk in changing the Core OS.  When they switched from 3e to 4e, they lost a huge portion of market share as other companies continued to build of the 3e OS to give existing players more of what they wanted.  Do they really want to risk their market share again now when the game is more popular than ever, and supplemental books continue to become top sellers with every release?  That, to me, would be an insane business decision.</blockquote>

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