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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Desdichado" data-source="post: 2351213" data-attributes="member: 2205">Oh, no doubt.  But they could very easily be wrong -- companies are wrong about that kind of stuff every day.And when they don't resemble most other markets, that's a good reason to be suspicious of their findings.  I'm not trying to say that I know better than Keith Strohm, Ryan Dancey, or anyone else.  All I'm saying is that their "findings"; what little we know about them, seem odd.  I'd love to see the actual results of their marketing research.  From what I remember of the parts they did reveal, there wasn't much in the way of market research that would lead to any conclusion whatsoever about "fragmenting the consumer base."  They were more concerned about player habits in general -- how often folks played, how many people played, which games they played, D&D's market share relative to its competitors, etc.I have a sneaking suspicion that nobody actually knows anything at all about what the market wanted from D&D, various settings, etc. other than gut reactions.  What Dancey and Co. probably understood better was the increased overhead and lower overall revenues associated with the scattershot approach of D&D in the waning days of 2e.But I wonder if maybe the baby wasn't thrown out with the bathwater; the strategy wasn't the problem, but the implementation of it.Again, sure, I don't have any information to back me up -- just enough of a business background to be passingly familiar with some of these concepts, and seeing "fragmentation of the customer" base in many other industries that does not at all have a negative impact on the profitability of the company, because they know how to do it right so that they can reach niche markets, and reap profitability from them.  In fact, in many industries, "fragmenting the consumer base" is a necessity.  If you don't do it, you're competitors will gobble up your market share.Of course, Dancey's market research showed that the market share of D&D's competitors was so low as to be negligible.  So maybe they did their cost benefit analysis and figured that the folks they lost due to the more monolithic nature of D&D not split into various subgenres weren't really worth the cost of keeping them.  RPGs, still after 30+ years, are essentially a strange breed of monopoly.</blockquote>

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