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Darksun Adventure sales from Ben Riggs author of Slaying the Dragon
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<blockquote data-quote="GreyLord" data-source="post: 8702488" data-attributes="member: 4348"><p>And then WotC went and split that player base 100 times MORE than what TSR ever did.</p><p></p><p>There were probably over 100 settings that were officially supported by OGL/D20 (hence the D&D rules). These were ALL competing with Forgotten Realms, Living Greyhawk, and official WotC campaign settings. You want to split the "Base" even more than TSR did...do what WotC did with 3e and 3.5 with the OGL.</p><p></p><p>That's not what the problem was...really. As I've said over the years (hardly anyone has listened though) was that it was bad business decisions (like investing money into a product that they wouldn't make back. If you sell a product that will only sell 5000 products, you can still make money off of it. You just don't spend MORE money than you will make back from it. Or, you don't sell the product at a loss. As someone pointed out above, if you sell 250K units at a 1 dollar loss, you just lost 250K dollars instead of making a profit. You sell almost the same product but cut some of the costs that are sunk into it (maybe it's a paperback book with less art for example) and you can at least make some money off of that).</p><p></p><p>It's not splitting the line with campaign settings that are the problem, but HOW you split the line. YOU can split the line and make a bunch of money if you want to. Any research AT ALL would have shown (and still does) that if a player is likely to buy one campaign setting, they probably (not all of them do, but many do) will be buying more than just that campaign setting. They will like to try out other worlds or other types of adventures and ideas. (and surprisingly, this ALSO applies to RPGs. TSR did this with Star Frontiers, Gamma World, and other lines out there, though this has not been as replicated as much by WotC).</p><p></p><p>4e I think went even deeper into the strategy then 3e and 3.5 did. Instead of just focusing on releasing the Rulebooks (which they did twice, once with the original release, once with essentials), they also went to seeing campaign settings would flare up and die in a year or two. So, they released a campaign setting a year (or I think that was the goal) so you have that big initial sales of the campaign setting, and then when that dwindles, you can release the next big campaign setting.</p><p></p><p>You can see the trends on the charts here, and it appears 4e learned from that setup and went with it in it's campaign setting releases as well. No need to support campaign settings once the big initial sales fall, instead, move on to the next big thing.</p><p></p><p>I think in a way Pathfinder has done this as well with it's focus on Adventure Paths. That makes for a 6 month excitement over that path, and then it's onto the next big thing...aka...next big AP.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="GreyLord, post: 8702488, member: 4348"] And then WotC went and split that player base 100 times MORE than what TSR ever did. There were probably over 100 settings that were officially supported by OGL/D20 (hence the D&D rules). These were ALL competing with Forgotten Realms, Living Greyhawk, and official WotC campaign settings. You want to split the "Base" even more than TSR did...do what WotC did with 3e and 3.5 with the OGL. That's not what the problem was...really. As I've said over the years (hardly anyone has listened though) was that it was bad business decisions (like investing money into a product that they wouldn't make back. If you sell a product that will only sell 5000 products, you can still make money off of it. You just don't spend MORE money than you will make back from it. Or, you don't sell the product at a loss. As someone pointed out above, if you sell 250K units at a 1 dollar loss, you just lost 250K dollars instead of making a profit. You sell almost the same product but cut some of the costs that are sunk into it (maybe it's a paperback book with less art for example) and you can at least make some money off of that). It's not splitting the line with campaign settings that are the problem, but HOW you split the line. YOU can split the line and make a bunch of money if you want to. Any research AT ALL would have shown (and still does) that if a player is likely to buy one campaign setting, they probably (not all of them do, but many do) will be buying more than just that campaign setting. They will like to try out other worlds or other types of adventures and ideas. (and surprisingly, this ALSO applies to RPGs. TSR did this with Star Frontiers, Gamma World, and other lines out there, though this has not been as replicated as much by WotC). 4e I think went even deeper into the strategy then 3e and 3.5 did. Instead of just focusing on releasing the Rulebooks (which they did twice, once with the original release, once with essentials), they also went to seeing campaign settings would flare up and die in a year or two. So, they released a campaign setting a year (or I think that was the goal) so you have that big initial sales of the campaign setting, and then when that dwindles, you can release the next big campaign setting. You can see the trends on the charts here, and it appears 4e learned from that setup and went with it in it's campaign setting releases as well. No need to support campaign settings once the big initial sales fall, instead, move on to the next big thing. I think in a way Pathfinder has done this as well with it's focus on Adventure Paths. That makes for a 6 month excitement over that path, and then it's onto the next big thing...aka...next big AP. [/QUOTE]
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