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Message: <blockquote data-quote="innerdude" data-source="post: 5828977" data-attributes="member: 85870">This, more than anything, is an interesting question that could shed a lot of light on our hobby: what really is the total annual market cap, both in the U.S. / North America and worldwide? I did a very (very) rough estimate in another thread several months back--we know, for example, for a certainty that the Pathfinder RPG core rulebook is now on its fifth printing. I've seen a number of reliable sources in the printing industry state that for a book of the PFRPG's size and material, a typical print run is somewhere between 50,000 to 75,000 copies. Even if we take the absolute high end for that number, that means there are still currently only approximately 350,000 to 400,000 total copies of the PFRPG core in print.I don't have any idea how Paizo's distribution deal with wholesalers works, but in order to maintain profit all the way down to the local FLGS, I'm assuming that the margin on those $49.99 price tags has to be reasonably high. If you estimate that Paizo's wholesale price to distributors is around $20, (a not unrealistic number, considering Amazon sells the book for $31.49) that means at the approximate maximum, Paizo has made $7.5 million in sales on the PFRPG core book since its release in August 2009--approximately 2.5 years ago. Annualized, that means Paizo saw approximately $3 million in 2011 from the sales of core rules. The real trick would be to extrapolate numbers from other products and product lines, something that we simply can't calculate. We can, for the most part, track which printing a rulebook is on--for example, is the Bestiary on its third printing now? But even that's a lot of guesswork, not science. But the real point to think about--the second-best, possibly first-best selling RPG title of the past 3 years barely made its parent company $3 million last year. If, as Hussar suggests, DDI represents approximately $5 million in annual revenue, that's a huge number--relative to what it's going up against, but that's a drop in the puddle for most corporations of any real size. Based on those two numbers from Paizo and Wizards, though, I'm willing to bet the market cap is higher than $30 million. In fact, I'm sure that combined, WotC and Paizo's total revenue on their RPG lines is upwards of that number ($40 million+). For example, we know for a fact that to be considered a "core" brand, D&D has to hit the $50 million threshold for Hasbro (though since the Hasbro purchase of WotC, D&D hasn't ever reached it). Throw in Fantasy Flight, Green Ronin, Goodman, Mongoose, Steve Jackson, Cubicle 7, Pinnacle, and White Wolf, and it's not a stretch to expect that total market cap number to keep creeping upwards. If all eight of those companies averaged ~$5 million across all product lines, that puts the total value somewhere around $80 million. Throw in another ~$5 million for everyone else--OSR, indy press, etc.--and you're at $85 million. Throw in the U.K. and European mainland markets, that number might go as high as $100 or $110 million.  But to give some perspective--a typical, modest, run-of-the-mill hospital  in a rural area in the American South has an annual operating budget of $90-$120  million (I used to know a CEO of a hospital in Tennessee). That means to cover expenses, the hospital has to do AT LEAST that amount of revenue to remain viable. In other words, a single, average-sized hospital in a low-density population area in the U.S. brings in as much or more revenue (not necessarily profits, but revenue) in a typical year as the ENTIRE RPG INDUSTRY. Now that's sobering.</blockquote>

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