Is it WotC’s responsibility to bring people to the hobby?

[S'mon]

It is possible that 4e was a failure. It is also possible that 4e did just fine and made a tidy profit, but the writing is on the wall that it will not continue to be as much of a success in the future. These are not the same thing, but both are reasons to move into developing a new edition now. However, people tend to conflate the two, or forget the latter is an option.

So, part of it depends on your definition of "success". Is it a success if it earns you a boatload of money for 4 years? Or is is a success only if it does so for 8+ years? Who is making that determination?

My definition would involve the concept of "meets or exceeds expectations" - particularly for Hasbro (and I'm talking about success from the corporate POV) its Return on Investment. For Hasbro, success =/= "makes a profit". Success = "Makes more return than we could have made by investing the money in something else".

Even if 4e did brilliantly 2008-10, we know it was cancelled early. If the plan had always been to terminate 4e in 2011/12, then they would have had 5e ready to go in mid/late 2012, right? Not a 2-2.5 year gap. Or do you think everything is unfolding just as Hasbro predicted? They're Cylons with a Plan?

 

[Umbran]

For Hasbro, success =/= "makes a profit". Success = "Makes more return than we could have made by investing the money in something else".

That is, at best, a first approximation, though. WotC gets to decide what it views as a success.

Even if 4e did brilliantly 2008-10, we know it was cancelled early. If the plan had always been to terminate 4e in 2011/12, then they would have had 5e ready to go in mid/late 2012, right? Not a 2-2.5 year gap. Or do you think everything is unfolding just as Hasbro predicted? They're Cylons with a Plan?

I'm suggesting that business these days has a far more nuanced view than "meets prediction == success, fail to meet prediction == failure". The thing is not a digital toggle switch, with only two states.

I see no *need* to pigeonhole it, except as a dismissive appeal to the emotional content of the word "failure". We can speak of how it seemed to do well or poorly from different points without trying to shove it into one bucket. Doing so tends to limit the scope of our considerations.

For example, what if the "failure" were not a matter of game design, but of unexpected market saturation due to economic recession during the past few years? Will you really consider that possibility seriously if you've dumped the game into the "failure" bucket?

 

[Halivar]

Even if 4e did brilliantly 2008-10, we know it was cancelled early. If the plan had always been to terminate 4e in 2011/12, then they would have had 5e ready to go in mid/late 2012, right? Not a 2-2.5 year gap. Or do you think everything is unfolding just as Hasbro predicted?

Seems to me a smart move would be the have the Next Big Thing (tm) ready to go before your current product dies, not after. If we take an RPG's life expectancy to be 6-8 years, then the timing for starting up 5E development strikes me as just right.

 

[S'mon]

That is, at best, a first approximation, though. WotC gets to decide what it views as a success.

Indeed.