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

[Mithreinmaethor]

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.

Actually my friends that don't have forums accounts and I decided to check to see if what you said is true. We could not find them listed anywhere with a forum identity in the DDi group.

 

[Mirtek]

Actually my friends that don't have forums accounts and I decided to check to see if what you said is true. We could not find them listed anywhere with a forum identity in the DDi group.

The question is whether these are the missing 19k between the figures shown outside and inside the group

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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.

There are 3 sources of info on harcopy sales:

1) ICv2 - Presumably their reports are worth SOMETHING as they sell the actual report as a product. There we have from 3Q-2008 to 1Q-2011 4e being listed 1st (one Q it was tied with PF). PF has been listed #1 for 3 quarters IIRC. Hard to say what that means, but they had 2 solid years at #1, and have never been less than #2. PF is earlier in its lifecycle by a year. Without paying for the report you're not going to learn much from all of this, but 4e clearly has sold relatively well vs other RPGs, as one would expect.

2) Amazon's ongoing sales rankings - This just ranks various individual books, but again what you can gather from this is that the early 4e books were hot sellers when they came out. Later books predictably less so. Pretty much the same for PF. Seems typical for an edition, everyone picks up the core books, less people progressively pick up each additional splat.

3) We know WotC stated they pre-sold the entire first print run of the PHB and did a second print run immediately. There has definitely also been a 3rd printing, but they seemed to indicate that they still have enough stock that they haven't printed more.

Clearly 4e did what you would expect at a basic level, outsold all other RPGs pretty much straight for 2 years, with PF doing quite well as RPGs go. There's of course no way to tell if that meets whatever goals they set.

God only knows what the equation is with DDI. It HAS to be cheaper by a LARGE sum to put out per subscriber than print magazines were, which were apparently at least profitable at similar subscriber levels. From what I know of web service business economics they should be able to make pretty good money off even 30k subscribers, but if it cannibalizes enough book sales it could be nominally unprofitable, though that would imply some pretty nice profits on the book side.