D&D General Did 5e 2024 Not meet the economic goals set, and if not, why not?

[payn]

What's an AL GM? I presume it doesn't mean that he GM's in Alabama, because that shouldn't be any more of a tough gig than anywhere else.

Adventure League the organized play for 5E.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

According to their public statements, they will never do that - the plan is to stick with 5e forever, and to just call it D&D, not 5e. What we will see is additional evolution within that framework. Again, according to WotC. So you’re safe!

It’s also not clear how they could even do a clean break to a new edition without crippling the game, given that 60% of the player base, and growing, is apparently now tied to DnDBeyond.

The only way that I could see that it could be done is make D&DBeyond capable of supporting both. However, that breaks the lessons of TSR, since they are now supporting a system that competes with their flagship product.
Another path they could take would be make D&DBeyond system agnostic. I could only see this occurring if they decide to go the Steam route where the store and similar products become more significant than the game.

 

[bedir than]

This is why this topic is endless.

We simply don’t know the actual revenue and profit numbers for D&D on its own, so we cannot say whether or not it met the goals of the company, and we certainly cannot determine that any given edition failed. What we have is little bits of information that can be interpreted different ways but are not enough to give a clear picture.

Someone in @Alphastream Discord does the complex multi-variable algebra to suss out a likely revenue number.
Q1 with the final core release was ~80 million for D&D
Q2 with continually falling BG3 monies and late Dungeon Delves was ~71 million

Hasbro in full was $981 mil for the quarter

 

[Micah Sweet]

What's an AL GM? I presume it doesn't mean that he GM's in Alabama, because that shouldn't be any more of a tough gig than anywhere else.

Adventurer's League. WotC's organized play program.

 

[bedir than]

The only way that I could see that it could be done is make D&DBeyond capable of supporting both.

It currently supports both WotC versions of 5e

 

[NN]

My uninformed curmudgeonly quasi grog opinion:

Its not hit targets

Because

People who like 2014 5E have mostly made peace with the bits they don’t like.

People who don't like 2014 5E have calculated they wont like 5.5E either and are playing other games.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

It currently supports both WotC versions of 5e

Class structure and mechanics between the two version is pretty minimal. That support is limited to people that have already purchased the old version. The old core books are invisible to new subscribers as far as I know.
Now, if D&DBeyond starts to support Tales of the Valiant or Level up in the marketplace of character builder you may then have a point.
Even then it is still 5e the core structure is similar in all those cases.
Now if they change to game to the degree that 4e changed from 3.x. that would require some extensive work on the D&DBeyond codebase to support it. It would also create a strong incentive for people that do not want to play the new game to switch out to one of the 5e clones. Then they are creating a real incentive to not continue in the D&DBeyond ecosystem and marketplace and move to platform that supports the ruleset the players prefer.
Then they could try to retain the old customers by supporting the old game with new material, or invite the clone games onto D&DBeyond.

 

[bedir than]

Class structure and mechanics between the two version is pretty minimal. That support is limited to people that have already purchased the old version. The old core books are invisible to new subscribers as far as I know.

supporting perpetual 5e meaning that they're required to sell all versions runs counter to the common definitions of words.

Hyandai still repairs old versions of the current Elantra. That's support. No one would suggest that they are required to sell the old verisons.

 

[Sulicius]

Someone in @Alphastream Discord does the complex multi-variable algebra to suss out a likely revenue number.
Q1 with the final core release was ~80 million for D&D
Q2 with continually falling BG3 monies and late Dungeon Delves was ~71 million

Hasbro in full was $981 mil for the quarter

I have been scouring through his messages, but I can't find confirmation on the Q1 one.

 

[bedir than]

I have been scouring through his messages, but I can't find confirmation on the Q1 one.

He may have shared what was DMd. He's brought up that number on the podcast and Mastodon