Edition Cycles and declining sales

[pawsplay]

Wouldn't it make sense to start by publishing the most popular and hence profitable books and work down the line? I don't think declining sales show declining interest so much as less interesting books. Also, statistically speaking, sales have to be lower for all subsequent books, unless you suppose players buying sourcebooks to support other books they don't own.

Also, also, some books just aren't very good, and while Wizards is going to make darn sure the first few books in a line are very good, down the road, well, production schedule happens.

 

[DEFCON 1]

As ggroy pointed out, DDI kind of nullifies the need for me to buy it. The PHB contains the actual rules to run the game along with the DMG, but PHB3?

What exactly is going to be in there that isn't going to be in the character builder?

Probably nothing... but you are already "buying" it by paying for DDI for the months leading up to the publishing of the book.

Which is why I think WotC is perfectly happy with this new model of sales, the subscription fee. Who cares if they sell less physical books... everyone is buying those books electronically via the DDI. If it means they have to print less harccopy... that's cool... no skin off their nose. And what's probably better for them using the DDI subscription model as opposed to the hardcopy sales model... is that (as folks above have stated) they KNOW on a monthly basis how much money they are bringing in.

With hardcopy sales, they have to run risks like the software developer companies do... spend a lot of money up front and for several years during development, and then just hope the product they eventually release will be popular enough to allow them to recoup their expenses and make a profit on top of it. But with the subscription model... they have a better idea of just how much money they probably have coming in and at their disposal, and thus can more accurately determine what they can spend on new development.

And I think the fact that WotC did move to a 5-times a week release schedule of DDI content (from the 3-times a week), shows us that they probably have been doing well with the subscriptions coming in. Two additional days means more articles, which means more writers to pay, which means they apparently have more money available to spend on them (above and beyond the money they already spend to pay the writers of the actual "books". If the DDI was not bringing in enough money... we would see a maintain of the release schedule (or even a contraction), and not an expansion like we've gotten.

 

[Dausuul]

Of course, the DDI is also not guaranteed to maintain sales. I have already considered terminating my subscription - I have the character builder and the monster builder on my machine, terminating the subscription won't change that, and the new game content is becoming less and less useful to me.

Right now, I'm holding off, mainly because the improvements to the DDI itself (new adventure tools, new features and bug fixes for the character and monster builder, et cetera) provide me an incentive to stick with it. Plus I paid for a year, so there's no immediate gain to canceling. Still, every time I feel a pinch in my bank account and decide to review my finances, DDI is one of the things I look at.

 

[rjdafoe]

What happens when WOTC does do a 5E, and everything in the DDI vanishes? Those who only subscribe and don't buy the books...what happens when the 4E material is no longer there?

Didn't Rouse bascially beg folks to keep buying the books?

"Everything" does not go away. It stays on your computer, and even on youor backups. The only thing that may go away is the compendium and the updates to the programs.


I highly doubt WotC is going to delete the contents of thing installed on your computer.

 

[ggroy]

So maybe that is the lesson for WotC - continuing each series isn't an inherently bad thing, as long as they can actually keep up the quality of each book, and ensure it has something new to create interest.

This time around, if there isn't enough content to fill up a new splatbook and/or WotC is not very confident in the sales of such a splatbook, there's always the option of offering the content as a DDI-only exclusive (ie. classes, weapons, races, etc ...).

 

[JRRNeiklot]

"Everything" does not go away. It stays on your computer, and even on youor backups. The only thing that may go away is the compendium and the updates to the programs.


I highly doubt WotC is going to delete the contents of thing installed on your computer.

Why not? Amazon did.

 

[mudbunny]

Why not? Amazon did.

*blink* *blink*

I am not sure if you are asking a serious question or not.

To me, thinking that WotC is going to go onto your computer and delete, without your permission, all of the 4E DDI tools that are out (or will come out) is right up there with WotC ninjas coming into your house to burn your 3.5 books now that 4E is out. In other words, so for out of the realm of possibility as to be impossible.

 

[Scribble]

What happens when WOTC does do a 5E, and everything in the DDI vanishes? Those who only subscribe and don't buy the books...what happens when the 4E material is no longer there?

They either buy the books hey actually utilized on the "used" market, or they move on.

 

[mudbunny]

What happens when WOTC does do a 5E, and everything in the DDI vanishes? Those who only subscribe and don't buy the books...what happens when the 4E material is no longer there?

That is a risk that *anyone* subscribing to a digital subscription service runs. Do you play an MMO? Well, if the company goes belly-up, you are not going to be able to use all of the data that you downloaded to your computer anymore. With DDI, you have the option to download all of the copies of Dungeon/Dragon and burn them to a DVD, where they cannot disappear.

Or for a more precise comparison, Monte Cook has his Dungeon a Day website (I think that is the name) that you can subscribe to. If, for whatever reason, the website goes belly-up, you lose all of the content that your subscription provided access to unless you downloaded it to your computer and/or archived it somewhere.

 

[pawsplay]

*blink* *blink*

I am not sure if you are asking a serious question or not.

To me, thinking that WotC is going to go onto your computer and delete, without your permission, all of the 4E DDI tools that are out (or will come out) is right up there with WotC ninjas coming into your house to burn your 3.5 books now that 4E is out. In other words, so for out of the realm of possibility as to be impossible.

Well, what does the EULA say?