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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jester David" data-source="post: 6333891" data-attributes="member: 37579">Those reports were based on extremely short term data and also reflected the fact there was no stand out series or book to draw in readers, and there are a number of conflicting data points. Ebooks are going strong and not going anywhere.   Video games are a much, much larger industry than RPGs and there are a lot of complicated factors, such as the existence of consoles versus PCs, the former being much harder on pirated content. PCs have only just surpassed consoles again, with the former previously leading in revenue. Which still means that just under half of the revenue comes from consoles. And there's so much more internet activity that requires a server, so that it's much harder to pirate games and get the full experience. I disagree with this strongly. Placing the failure of 4th Edition on any one factor is likely a mistake and it was the combination of many things that led to the downfall. DDI was a huge problem issue for D&D. Initially, it was the equivalent of making a Netflix style program where you could download and keep the content for as long as you wanted. Unsurprisingly, people signed up once every six months, paid $17, got all the content released in the intervening months, then cancelled. It was a huge problem, especially since the vast majority of the books were nothing but crunch, which mean you were getting all the content via DDI but more convenient and vastly cheaper. WotC didn't help themselves by continually to produce errata, which devalued the physical product and made DDI - which incorporated all the errata - more attractive. 4e's design also encouraged the use of the Character Builder, otherwise you ended up looking up powers from dozens of different sources both physical and digital while building a character. WotC was pushing you to the program that took away their money.There was also the economy which took a sharp dive when 4e was released, leaving people less money and disposable incomes. Yes, had 4e been better received it would have had the numbers to power through these problems. But that does not mean the problems didn't when even the people who enjoyed the game and were playing were not necessarily buying the books. The other industries mentioned have made great profit by making it more convenient not to pirate their products. Why hunt for a torrent when I can just go on Netflix, stream from my cable box, search iTunes from my phone, and download from Steam? Steam very likely being a big factor in the growth of PC revenue. (Movies are also making more money through the coincidence that other nations, mostly China, are interested in American films. Lots of films are now only considered a success because of foreign sales. Trends have changed and expect far more movies that feature China in key roles and international cooperation.) And the digital services do not allow owning the content. At any time Stream could pull all your games, and you can't keep a movie after streaming. D&D does not have the same advantage. Publishers don't have the same ease of streaming content or subscribing making it easier to not pirate. Cheap and affordable PDFs can help, but that does not help offset publishing costs. And, unlike the above media, the format provided for the books is easily pirated and distributed. While all of WotC's 4e products ended up scanned and pirated it always took far longer than Pathfinder's products.</blockquote>

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