What is the annual cash flow of Settlers of Catan?
Probably next to nothing. Actually, after a bit of googling, the guy who created it couldn't afford to retire from his day job until 1999 to officially create board games full time.
For some reason, despite all the intelligence on this forum, some people cannot seem to understand that if all WotC did was reprint the rules and sell them, all of the staff of D&D would be laid off. We would get no new supplements. The only updates would be from D&Di. Without new products, WotC would quit publishing D&D and it would quietly slip off the shelves, only to found at garage sales and on ebay.
The fact is, no bookstore is going to keep the same amount of stock of a 15 year old book/game on the shelf as a brand new book. A new edition means more money.
So what if WOTC decided to just stick with 4E Essentials, regardless of whether or not it's the Platonic Form of role playing game systems? What if they just decided to go with it for a while (like, a decade) and see if it could gain traction? Is there a possible business model that could support that in this industry, or do we have to face the fact that, at heart, Dungeons and Dragons is so weak of a product that the only way it can last is by making the same few thousand people buy it over and over again every couple years?
This is why this quote won't happen. There is no money with sticking with essentials, 4th edition, 3.5, or any other edition for long periods of time because eventually, no one is gonna buy it. It is, however, comical that you would call D&D a weak product, but for some reason brag about a game that I have never heard of, and has sold so poorly, the game designer still had to work as a dental assistant for several years, and only after he had other games to sell as well. Why? Because that one game wasn't enough. And according to Amazon and the products there, there has been revisions to Settlers. I hate to tell you, but D&D gained "traction" thirty years ago when it became a household name. The fact that it is such a strong game is the reason they can make new editions. Do you think the only people playing D&D are the ones around in the late 70s or early 80s? There are new D&D players born everyday and they want a modern version of the rules, not some old, crappy system that wasn't that great in the first place. D&D has done an excellent job with changing with the times, and it is sad that some people can't see that. My kids will probably look at 4th edition and laugh at how silly it was, just like I laugh every time I pull out an old character sheet and see ThacO written on it that I used in middle school.
WotC is here to make money. If some how essentials last for a long time, it is because it is making money. The only way I see that happening is a good box set coming out every 3-4 months that contains rules variants. Within the next 10 years we will see 5th edition, or a major revision of the rules. A new "essentials" type line that will redo the base classes, redo the monsters but still be compatible with 4th edition just like essentials is, is a possibility. A lot of people like when they put out new editions of the game, and I guarantee, every naysayer of 4th edition is probably above the age of 35 and still very set in their old edition's ways. Most, if not all of the rules changes I have enjoyed. The ones I don't, I change back to the rule I did enjoy.