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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kobold Boots" data-source="post: 5370206" data-attributes="member: 92239">Offering a quick reply. How much errata have we had?  -Quite a bit. Very similar question to "How many Windows Patches have been released since Vista or 7 rolled out?" Where's the products that were cancelled? -Uncertain, though were I to guess I'd say that the material will see print through Essentials or Dragon articles. Funny thing about content is that once it's written it generally sees print as the costs are already sunk and the material can fluff up what would otherwise be a light production schedule. If I were to guess about "where the products are" I'd say that the money to improve the web delivery of products and the DDI tools had to come from somewhere and it may have come from the budget publishing DMG3 and other products. While I'm not an insider to WoTC I do know quite a bit about the pressures the publishing industry is facing in general as I'm an IT person working in the publishing sector. Last time I looked WoTC was the number 5 publisher in the SciFi/Fantasy space. In terms of our own stuff we are: 1. Working hard to develop the infrastructure to push content on demand to an ever-changing and evolving list of devices that people are carrying. 2. Working hard to go from analog to digital workflow in order to speed up the publishing process from contract to editorial to art to printers. Never mind inventory control and supply chain for products that don't exist in a tangible way. 3. Working hard to understand and mitigate the legal risks and changes to contracts required in terms of who owns the rights to content published in different markets when technology is involved (again, who gets royalties on a PDF that is hosted in the US and purchased in China or India?) Is it published in the US or at point of sale? Note that all of these things impact the D&D brand. Most people on the forums say things like "Why does this platform not work with iPad" or "Why can't you publish book and pdf as one package" The blunt answer is: As a business there are many decisions that need to be made to put products out to as many people as possible and create a supply chain that gets product out to as many different technology platforms as possible. WoTC appears to be further along than some publishers, but about 2 years behind the market leaders.  Additionally, they're a game company that has a lot of ground to cover to change its culture (most likely) from a dice and paper company to a digital gaming giant. Mistakes are going to happen and we need to be understanding of that.  Specifically to the iPad: Silverlight works just fine under Firefox on the Mac. The fact that it doesn't work on the iPad is more of an Apple thing than a WoTC thing. As we all know the iPad doesn't support Flash or a real web browser either at time of this writing. So, if you make a choice to support the iPad, you're making a choice to limit your tools for the iPad, and as such forcing the decision to build two separate products in parallel, up to doubling your digital production costs. Margins on books are collapsing due to pressure from discounters like Amazon and it's entirely necessary to control costs until the economy improves and the market for publishers stabilizes. Ergo, regardless of iPad fans: It makes no sense for a game company with margin concerns to publish for the iPad if they can still get on the mac through Firefox and on PCs via the same product. Specifically to the PDF and book as a package:  Could be done. However, it's not wise to do until the digital rights management questions are answered and I'd bet that there's some team at WoTC working that. I'd be surprised if it's not in play and resolved within a year or two. But make no mistake, a global drm legal project takes a good amount of time for a small company that uses multiple distribution methods. Especially if they're dealing with cultural issues internally. Two cents. I really have no idea what the culture is over there or what they're working on, but I get what could be in the way of stuff, hence why I'm just not sweating it and playing my game.</blockquote>

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