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Message: <blockquote data-quote="GreyLord" data-source="post: 5368568" data-attributes="member: 4348">I disagree.  They are doign complete revisions of D&D, with at least two full revisions, and one small revision (3.5) with another one that's debatable whether it was a small revision or not (essentials).  With brand names, revision is typically bad.  D&D is NOT a boardgame...though it is a game and DEFINATELY NOT a videogame.  A brand is more comparable to books in general...or fiction.  Take the Lord of the Rings.  Now imagine if the booksellers wanted to perk up sales...so they rewrote it...to make it up to "current" trends and standards along with "current" writing styles.You'd probably anger about 90% of the fanbase.  So there are about (no idea real numbers) a one hundred million LotR fans worldwide.  You were only selling about 20,000 copies a year.  With this rewrite...you suddenly sell 10 million copies in ONE YEAR.  Sure that's nothing compared to the 100,000,000...but that's a heck of a lot more than 20,000 copies.  Plus of those 100 million, 99% probably hadn't read it in years anyways...Win/Win...right? You've revitalized a brand...Of course it could go the opposite way as well...instead of 10 million copies sold...you could end up with 5,000 copies sold...which is WORSE then what you had before...AND you have the ill will of everyone you just peeved off.Furthermore...you say you will discontinue publication of the original.  Now going with a positive slant...you've permanently lost that 90 million who may or may not have ever gotten another copy of LotR.  But you DO have 10 million other pleased customers...and with those you can use a new way of printing out books...so the trilogy now becomes an ongoing extended universe (like the Star Wars extended Universe) that you can keep selling more and more books.  Suddenly that 20,000 copies a year that you were selling is selling as a brand upwards of ONE MILLION books a year.  However...8 years down the line...you sink to selling only One Hundred thousand copies a year.  Still better than what was originally, but you want to get back up to at least that One Million copies a year.So you decide another complete rewrite is in order and to stop publishing the revised ones.  You also decide that though you had been publishing PDF's of the originals for the truly desperate...that it's possibly cutting into the bottom line...so you'll kill all PDF sales of the original LotR AND the revised one that was written.This one WILL take elements of plot hooks that have been working in video games, TV series, movies, and boardgames as well...using the most current trends in gaming.  In addition, we see the movies sold well and still have a large following, so we'll actually base this new Generation Edition off the Movies...at least some of it.  Other parts we'll base off of what seems popular in culture right now with fiction...  This version is the Generation's edition...and with it we lose 50% more of the fanbase.  So now we only sell 5 million copies...still doing well...and that's a heck of a lot better than the 1 million copies we sold per year...or the 100,000 copies we were selling at the slump.Furthermore we've introduced an electronic idea where we can sell updated ideas to customers in regards to LotR trilogy (though it's also an extended universe now) book series.  The next year sales are at 50,000 copies a year...and we know we have to do something cause our bosses aren't happy.Then we realize...with all these revisions we've alienated 95% of those who loved the original LotR.  Perhaps if we figured out a way to get the other 95 million into this new fangled Generational LotR series.  Perhaps we could rebrand it as the elementary books to LotR and put it out with covers exactly replicating those of the Blue/Green/Red solid color trilogy of the 80s????Perhaps you get my point...revisions can revitalize...but sometimes they kill things off just as much or right at the start.  Sometimes it takes time.</blockquote>

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