Does anybody know how well D&D has been doing?

[Argyle King]

If you're asking for pure speculation and conjecture on my part?


I would say that D&D is healthy in so much that the name brand is capable of carrying the product well enough to sell.

However, I would guess (based on... well, just guessing...) that it is not doing nearly as well as the original vision of 4E expected it to be performing by this point. I also do not feel that the economy is the only factor in why.

In closing... I think the brand name is helping, but I think the strength of it is being stretched a little thin at times. This isn't to say I feel D&D has ever been performing poor in comparison to other rpgs, but that I feel there are times when it could be argued that D&D is performing poorly when compared to previous D&D standards. D&D is still at the top overall -if I had to guess, but I believe the gap between their position at the top of the mountain and those below has been made far smaller over the past 5 years.

 

[Bagpuss]

More to the point, where is the knowledge of the value of DDI coming from?

If you are a member you can see the list of current members which is somewhere between 47000 and 66000 depending on which figure you take. Both these figures have been steadily climbing since I checked them after they went to the online version of the Character Builder (see below).

Assuming they are all paying a monthly/yearly fee then you are looking at a pretty significant revenue stream for D&D.

Figures I actually checked.
March 31, 2011 - Members of D&DI Group listed as 49673, if you checked the actual members list within the group it was 36143. (So a discrepancy of 13530).

Aprill 11, 2011 - Members of D&DI Group listed as 50401, if you checked the actual members list within the group it was 36779. (So a discrepancy of 13622).

Today 20 Dec 2011 - Members of D&DI Group listed as 66148, if you checked the actual members list within the group it was 47149. (So a discrepancy of 18999).

There is no telling how these figures relate to actual members, since the discrepancy seems to be getting larger I think the first number doesn't go down when people leave the subscription, but the second does. Still it maybe you don't appear in either count if you don't have a WotC forum account.

Still what you can see is that both figures are going up however, and that they have at least 47,000 members at around $6 a month (some will be paying more) so you are looking at, at least $282,000 a month income from the D&DI.

Not sure how that relates to book sales, however.

 

[Mirtek]

It's interesting to note that a poke through Hasbro's recent investor relations docs shows almost no mention of D&D, or any other WotC property.

Not just the recent ones, Hasbro has never deemed the D&D brand important enough to spare the few pixels to list it on the investor fact sheet or mention it in the sentence "bought WotC and it's MtG franchise".

This could be good as long as it stays under the radar and maybe bad if suddenly someone at Hasbro notices it and deems it underperforming

More to the point, where is the knowledge of the value of DDI coming from?

Well, the size of the DDI group is showing the minimum number. How much percentage is covered is up to discusio (I personally believe it to be way north of 50%, as I believe the majority of people with enough knowledge/interest to set up a DDI subscription also logs in at least once)


Edit: Just saw Bagpuss' post and I think it sounds reasonable that the higher number is the total number of DDI subscription and the lower number shown inside the group is the people that are also part of the group (aka having loged in at least once and thus were automatically added as group members)

 

[delericho]

Without access to the actual number of DDI subscribers, it's not possible to get any sort of impression of how well D&D is doing. It could be an abject failure, a minor success, or a runaway success. We simply don't know.

My feeling is that 66k subscribers just isn't enough for DDI to be considered a success. That isn't that much higher than the subscriber numbers for Dragon back when WotC decided it wasn't worth their while, and DDI costs rather more to keep going than Dragon did. And DDI has ripped the heart out of the market for print supplements, which the magazines never did.

At the same time, I don't think 66k is an accurate estimate of the number of DDI subscriptions. I'm pretty sure it's significantly higher than that.

If I had to guess, I would guess that DDI probably has about 200k subscribers, about three times the 66k we know about. I would further guess that this is considered a moderate success, but not a runaway success. Further, I would expect the WotC management to look at that, and the success of Pathfinder, and consider that this meant they could do significantly better - hence their apparent move towards 5e.

But... please note that all of the above is just a guess, based on an almost complete lack of data.

 

[Mirtek]

If I had to guess, I would guess that DDI probably has about 200k subscribers,

I think that guess is way too high. That's more than many MMOGs manage to get together and they are much more expensive to run than DDI

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Mirtek and Bagpuss, I am well aware of the DDI numbers but that was not the point I was making.

PeelSteel2 said, among other things

..The kicker is DDI, which out performs on a month to month basis all book sales by a very, very large margin....

Rechan quoted him and said

Where are you getting your online sales info vs. LGS info?

but did not qustion how he knew that DDI was outperforming the book trade by a wide margin, which is what i was wondering. Although it is possible that the online sales info Rechan is refering to is the DDI sub info and does not include online book channels like Amazon.

I would agree with Rechan that DDI is performing at least around or better than the level of Dragon and Dungeonm back in the day. I doubt it costs more to run than the print magazines, though.

I really do not know if it is outperforming the book trade though, since I have never seen anyone put a figure on what the turnover of the book trade migh actually be. So if PeelSteel2 has some numbers I would like to see them.

 

[Mithreinmaethor]

I think that guess is way too high. That's more than many MMOGs manage to get together and they are much more expensive to run than DDI

I can tell you that in the extended group of people I play with barely 1/4 of the have a wotc account to post on the forums with.

So it is not hard to believe that there is 2 or 3 DDi members that don't use the WotC site to every 1 that does.

 

[Shemeska]

If you are a member you can see the list of current members which is somewhere between 47000 and 66000 depending on which figure you take. Both these figures have been steadily climbing since I checked them after they went to the online version of the Character Builder (see below).

Assuming they are all paying a monthly/yearly fee then you are looking at a pretty significant revenue stream for D&D.

Figures I actually checked.
March 31, 2011 - Members of D&DI Group listed as 49673, if you checked the actual members list within the group it was 36143. (So a discrepancy of 13530).

Aprill 11, 2011 - Members of D&DI Group listed as 50401, if you checked the actual members list within the group it was 36779. (So a discrepancy of 13622).

Today 20 Dec 2011 - Members of D&DI Group listed as 66148, if you checked the actual members list within the group it was 47149. (So a discrepancy of 18999).

There is no telling how these figures relate to actual members, since the discrepancy seems to be getting larger I think the first number doesn't go down when people leave the subscription, but the second does. Still it maybe you don't appear in either count if you don't have a WotC forum account.

Still what you can see is that both figures are going up however, and that they have at least 47,000 members at around $6 a month (some will be paying more) so you are looking at, at least $282,000 a month income from the D&DI.

Not sure how that relates to book sales, however.

I'd guess that the DDI group figures represent the actual subscription numbers rather than a minimum (which often gets tossed around). As I understand it, the system now automatically creates a forum identity alongside a DDI login even if you don't visit the forums, and adds that into the DDI member group by default. That would make the DDI subscription numbers much lower than some would want to put it, and when combined with the money that was spent getting DDI up and running (plus ongoing costs) it makes it a toss-up if it's considered a success by WotC or not (especially if it ends up eating into physical book sales).

Another point since it was mentioned earlier. Hasbro doesn't get involved generally, but they do if things go downhill. It might be inferred from what was going on around the time that Greg Leeds came in to head WotC (mass DDI layoffs with the "digital reconsolidation" when they moved everything back in-house). Leeds came from elsewhere in Hasbro, and as I understand it was put in place to put things back in order. This is a combination of second hand info from folks there on the DDI side of things at the time, and my own inference, but it seems reasonable given how much $ was spent at the time.

 

[Glade Riven]

Well, I knew most info I would get would be anicdotle, but overall - about what I though: 4e seems to be doing decent, but not as well as expected.

 

[Rechan]

No, I am pretty damn curious about how someone knows the hardcopy sales figures. Since that's something that you can't just figure out by looking at DDi membership.