D&D 5E Greg Leeds talks about D&D

[Mistwell]

Revenue is...

You don't need to tell me what revenue is, but you should do your peers the courtesy of actually reading what you're replying to. He said net revenue. That first word, "net", has a lot of meaning. Net revenue is not the same as revenue. In fact, it's kinda unfortunate use of terms in finance as it tends to confuse people like you just got confused. I will say it again (since it's obvious from your reply you didn't read what you were replying to). "Net revenue" (which is not "revenue") is the money left from sales after you deduct the sales expenses and cost of the goods. Are you getting it now? It's not "profit" as it does not account for all possible expenses (like it does not count capital expenses) but it does account for most expenses (like cost of sales and cost of goods sold). It's what most people mean when they use the term "profit" in common parlance. Net revenue should not be confused with simply "revenue". He's definitely saying the books are making them more money than they cost - that's (in a nutshell) what positive net revenue means.

ICv2 was behind the previous interview, too where Leeds described sales as 'very, very strong'

The question is not what is necessarily happening now. At some point in the relatively near future, unless there's lots of growth in players of D&D, sales of the core 3 books must drop.

They've also said there is a lot of growth in players. Assuming they're not lying, that means the sales of the core 3 do not have to drop. And so far, all reported numbers from objective sources confirm that.

 

[Mistwell]

What the heck are you talking about?

Your statement that you should work on a new edition when the prior one is doing well.

Someone implied...

No, you inferred that. Your post, which did not say anything about 4e, was just a general statement. So I made a general reply. That you were back-door edition warring isn't really relevant. Either your statement stands on it's own as a general statement, or it does not.

... that it didn't make sense that 4e was doing fine in 2011 since they had already started working on 5e by that time. I was saying (paraphrasing here) that you don't wait until your product tanks before starting to work on its replacement (if you can help it).

What you said is, "The best time to work on a replacement product is when your current product is still doing well." Which isn't a helpful comment as by definition then there IS no time when it would be a bad idea to work on the replacement since you'd want to work on a replacement when the current line is doing either good or poorly.

I never said you have to start working on the replacement product the minute the current product is released. Only that you should start working on it before the current product tanks.

No, that's not what you said though maybe that's what you were thinking. What you said was, "The best time to work on a replacement product is when your current product is still doing well." It's still doing well the minute the current product is released, all the way through whatever point it's not doing well anymore.

So I agree with you that if it takes three years to delevop a replacement product and you don't think you will need it for ten or twenty years then now is not a good time to spend much resources on that replacement. Nothing I have said it incompatible with this.

I didn't say it was incompatible, just not helpful as it's way too broad a statement. By your standard there is virtually never a time when you should not be working on the replacement product. But that leads to a mentality of rapid edition cycling - if your R&D is being spent on the replacement, that means those same resources are not being applied to the current edition, which makes it sort of a self fulfilling prophecy. The current strategy is to try and run a long term edition (or as Greg Leeds says in this interview, to maintain a long tail). If it's working, then now would be a bad time to work on a replacement even if the current product is still doing well.

 

[Corpsetaker]

How on earth would you conjure up such a statistic? How many copies has this edition sold? That's the very minimum data point you need to make such an assertion. I strongly suspect that you do not have any such data, and are in position to be making such an assertion.

How on earth could I not?

How many copies of all the 3rd and 4th edition books have sold next to 5th edition? Let's say the 5th edition sold 100,00 and the 4th edition sold 50,000. Well the Martial 1 could sell 25,000 while the Arcane sells 40,000, while the primal sells 30,000.

You have a lot more material that was sold during the last editions than you do this one.

It's really not hard and you sit back and take a look overall.

Not to mention, look at how Amazon and it's cheap prices have influenced the sales as well.

If Amazon wasn't around to offer the books at crazy low prices how well do you think it would be doing? It's kind of one of those well since it's this cheap I might as well get it.

 

[Mistwell]

How on earth could I not?

How many copies of all the 3rd and 4th edition books have sold next to 5th edition? Let's say the 5th edition sold 100,00 and the 4th edition sold 50,000. Well the Martial 1 could sell 25,000 while the Arcane sells 40,000, while the primal sells 30,000.

You have a lot more material that was sold during the last editions than you do this one.

It's really not hard and you sit back and take a look overall.

Uh, Corpsetaker, that's bad logic. You're assuming numbers that you just don't have any evidence for, and you have one basic assumption behind it all that's flawed.

You're assuming selling 10 products will by definition sell more than 1 product, just by sheer quantity of products.

That's not a truism, and often false. The 10 products can sell fewer copies than the 1 product. In fact that's exactly what the phrase "Long Tail" was meant to speak to. That a single product can sell more in the long term than a series of burst sales that die off.

To use your example, let's say the 5th edition sold 1,100,000 and the 4th edition sold 500,000. Well the Martial 1 could sell 25,000 while the Arcane sells 40,000, while the primal sells 30,000. Those last three products? Almost meaningless for overall sales. Quantity of products doesn't necessarily have any correlation to quantity of total sales. In fact, a lot of people argue that increasing quantity of products often decreases total quantity of sales as the quantity of products spooks potential buyers from buying in the first place.

 

[robus]

If I look back 10 years ago, what would be a great store 10 years ago would be an average store today. And everything we do at Wizards of the Coast is to make the great store of today an average store of tomorrow. So that’s the evolution we’re seeing.​

I know what he's trying to say here - but a first glance it seems like they're actively bringing everyone down to mediocrity Perhaps "We're doing our best to disseminate the best practices of the top game stores so that everyone can have a great experience no matter which game store they visit."

 

[DEFCON 1]

It's really not hard and you sit back and take a look overall..

It's also not hard when you just pull random numbers out of your ass...

 

[Morrus]

How on earth could I not?

How many copies of all the 3rd and 4th edition books have sold next to 5th edition? Let's say the 5th edition sold 100,00 and the 4th edition sold 50,000. Well the Martial 1 could sell 25,000 while the Arcane sells 40,000, while the primal sells 30,000.

I'm really not interested in a conversation in which you just make up your own numbers to support your assertion.

 

[Warmaster Horus]

Businessman talks about business aspects of D&D (and Magic) in business terms. It's not really shocking - for the soul of D&D, if there is such a thing, you probably want a different thread.

Not saying it's shocking. Just not something I enjoy. Like sports shows that just talk about the money side of sports. Yeah, it has to exist but cheapens the experience I enjoy. IMHO.

 

[Parmandur]

Nice interview. One misapprehension in this thread: when Amazon or whoever sells a book at discount, that does not change what WOTC gets. Wizards sells the book, and the retailer sets a price they are comfortable with: the discount comes from Amazons' bottom line, not Wizards'.

 

[MwaO]

"Net revenue" (which is not "revenue") is the money left from sales after you deduct the sales expenses and cost of the goods. Are you getting it now? It's not "profit" as it does not account for all possible expenses (like it does not count capital expenses) but it does account for most expenses (like cost of sales and cost of goods sold). It's what most people mean when they use the term "profit" in common parlance. Net revenue should not be confused with simply "revenue". He's definitely saying the books are making them more money than they cost - that's (in a nutshell) what positive net revenue means.

You might want to reread what he actually said, not what you think he said...
"From a business perspective, revenue is up."(note that he doesn't say net)
"So you get more people buying fewer products for greater net revenue?"
"That is correct."(note that he doesn't say what he's using as the comparable nor does he say positive)

i.e. he agrees with the statement given to him, which can mean any number of things. Such as that's their intent rather than what is actually happening. He could be comparing this year to the year before 5e came out(which had basically no new product and no sales), etc...

They've also said there is a lot of growth in players. Assuming they're not lying, that means the sales of the core 3 do not have to drop. And so far, all reported numbers from objective sources confirm that.

Now normally, I wouldn't try to look at things that closely, but look again at this quote from the previous interview:
"Over-all our business is up significantly. I think anyone you talk to about what’s going on with Magic and D&D will tell you that we are having very, very strong sales."

i.e. he often makes really positive sounding statements and it very well may be positive, but you can't just assume it actually is positive. Because we have an objective instance of lousy sales where he somehow spun it to be positive.