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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ilbranteloth" data-source="post: 7724915" data-attributes="member: 6778044">The first company failed to produce a product, yes.The revenue of the companies is relative. They are a niche product in a niche market. To me the only question is whether they are profitable for themselves. It seems that way to me, although with small private companies we only have anecdotal evidence. Part of the evidence is that other companies are willing to jump in the ring. If there wasn’t money to be made, then that wouldn’t be the case.Whether it’s a good marketing strategy really depends on what they are trying to accomplish. For example, the content being available within a virtual tabletop enables virtual play and can increase the player base and potentially your paying customers. Releasing PDFs doesn’t have the same potential, unless you really think there are a significant number of people that only play games available in pdf.4th edition by the accounts I’ve seen was still a good seller. That it was potentially outsold by another company doesn’t mean that sales goals and such weren’t met. In many cases, especially in a niche market, a company selling another product expands the market as a whole, rather than takes sales away from another company. More importantly, though, that was a problem of their own making. For all practical purposes they were competing against a continuation of their own product line. One that appeared to be more popular than their then-current product.While that is theoretically possible, I think the sales numbers and new marketing strategy shows that the game is growing and sales are better than they have been in 20 years. So no, I don’t see a repeat of that scenario. And part of that marketing strategy is their digital content approach. Their approach is also very consistent with the current business trends - leverage your existing IP. Acererak, Strahd, Against the Giants, the Temple of Elemental Evil and the Forgotten Realms all have “star power” in the RPG world. There is a lot of nostalgia, but people also want new things. Making new things with existing IP is often easier than selling new things with new entirely new content. This has been shown consistently over things like comics and related movies. A new Superman comic sells far more than a new comic with new characters. The big characters sell more movie tickets than the niche characters (although starting the niche characters in a movie with the big characters is a good way to increase their own star power before releasing their own movies).Again, from what we know about sales numbers, it seems to be a winning strategy right now. As far as I know, every AP is selling in quantities that are considerably higher than most adventures in the past 20 years. RPG releases tend to have a shelf-life. Although I’m working off numbers in a similar hobby, in a niche like this, you tend to sell 80%+ of a title in the first year. Releasing things too quickly cannibalizes those sales, not giving the last release its full sales arc. Going back to what we know about sales numbers, again the strategy seems to be a solid one. The digital market for TTRPG is an emerging market, not a well established one. As a part of the gaming market it’s a very small niche, but with lots of growth potential. Competition is a great way to fuel growth, and growth in a new market means more sales. WotC is not a digital product developer. Letting companies that specialize in the product and making the content available for them to purchase seems like a very strong long term strategy in this space. In fact TSR might be seen as a pioneer for this approach. D&D and AD&D products were some of the earliest licensed IP in the video game market, and like attaching Mike Tyson’s name to a video game, the D&D name can make a big difference in the sales of a new video game. It’s exactly what no-name developers can use to make a product viable.</blockquote>

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