Is Wotc Slipping?

[Argyle King]

I think it depends upon your local area.

Here, the local gaming store is selling far more Pathfinder than 4E. 4E still sells, but it moves a bit slower.

At the local Barnes & Noble, I haven't noticed a change in their 4E display for quite a while. They've had to start backstocking some of the product because they have more of it than will fit onto the sales floor due to ordering more than what they've sold.

However, as with anybody else's post, this is purely one man's small view in a much larger scheme, so there's really no value I can place upon my observation.

 

[Wicht]

Pathfinder Core books have been outranking 4e on Amazon for months. Its nothing new, though skeptics keep making the same arguements everytime the point is raised. I was following it for a while to see how much it fluctuated and it didn't over a period of weeks and I got bored checking on it.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

At the local Borders Pathfinder is selling better with five books than 4e is with their whole line.

I expected Essentials to reverse that, but it didn't. Sales on Essentials were soft, sales on the Pathfinder Core, APG, and Bestiary 2 were solid. Core and APG needed restocks.

An exception was Tiles, which sold better than anything else in the 4e line. Better than half the 4e sales for the month.

The Basic game tanked, hard. Folks were not impressed with what they saw.

Sales on 4e have been down since before Christmas. Not just a matter of Pathfinder doing well, though it is, but also the sales on 4e have dropped by a fair amount.

I am curious to see how Ultimate Magic is going to do - it will be the first tightly focused book in the Pathfinder line, everything else has been more or less either core or general purpose.

Seeing how Pathfinder Basic does will also be interesting - perhaps it can begin to draw in some fresh blood? Though at this point all the teens & tweens I know who play have their own core books. (And I am happy beyond all measure to say that one of them is shaping up to become the next generation of GM. He immediately grasped not only how the handouts of two strip maps worked, but how they fit into the framework of the scenario. Made me feel proud as anything!)

The Auld Grump, week after next I get to see how they handle seeing three hundred and thirty three zombies on the table.... Thirty of them fast zombies.

 

[MrGrenadine]

Reliable (sales info), based on actual data? No. That's typically private business information.

But how I wish Paizo and WotC would just publish their damn numbers just once, just so every side could claim victory and we could put this line of discussion to bed once and for all.

 

[Umbran]

But how I wish Paizo and WotC would just publish their damn numbers just once, just so every side could claim victory and we could put this line of discussion to bed once and for all.

Oh, that wouldn't end the argument by a long shot. Sales numbers are, in fact, statistics. And we all know statistics can be massaged, folded, bent, spindled,and mutilated into saying what one wants them to say.

How I would wish that gamers would not take the business success of one company or another as a point of personal ego - then there would be no sides that would need to claim victory, and we wouldn't see gamers trying to gain supremacy over fellow gamers like this.

Of course, we are talking about a species that will riot over the outcome of a soccer game, but a guy can dream, right?

 

[Zil]

Pathfinder Core books have been outranking 4e on Amazon for months. Its nothing new, though skeptics keep making the same arguements everytime the point is raised. I was following it for a while to see how much it fluctuated and it didn't over a period of weeks and I got bored checking on it.

I've been checking the Amazon list several times a week for almost two months now and I have only seen Pathfinder not on top once in that period - the Essentials/Red Box was on top that one time. Initially it was the Bestiary 2 on top with the Core rules and Advanced Players Guide rounding out the top 5 for Paizo. The Bestiary 2 has slipped some now, but the Advanced Players Guide and Core book are still up there at the top.

 

[Dannager]

At the local Borders Pathfinder is selling better with five books than 4e is with their whole line.

I expected Essentials to reverse that, but it didn't. Sales on Essentials were soft, sales on the Pathfinder Core, APG, and Bestiary 2 were solid. Core and APG needed restocks.

Out of curiosity, how many Essentials books were stocked versus Pathfinder books? At every Borders and Barnes & Noble I've been to locally, there are plenty of Essentials books available, but none of them stock more than a copy (or two at most) of the Pathfinder core books. So, I mean "The APG needed a restock," might not mean much if that meant they needed to reorder the one copy they had, versus having ten copies of any given Essentials book and selling through five of them.

I'm always very wary of context-free information like that given above being spread around.

 

[S'mon]

Pathfinder Core books have been outranking 4e on Amazon for months. Its nothing new, though skeptics keep making the same arguements everytime the point is raised. I was following it for a while to see how much it fluctuated and it didn't over a period of weeks and I got bored checking on it.

Yes, I've checked it a few times myself and the Pathfinder Core Rulebook is always sitting up at the top there. That's not an hourly fluctuation, it seems very stable.

 

[Aberzanzorax]

If anything, the fact that it IS a very short term trend indicator along with several folks noticing a long term trend provides a stronger point for the healthy sales of the Pathfinder book(s).


I mean, if it is short term, you'd suspect that on several days pathfinder would be bumped down by just about any of the other condenders (including WotC, but not at all limited to them).

But I do believe it's short term...which seems to indicate a strong trend across multiple short terms (so strong that it is hardly ever bumped out of position) into the long(er) term as several have observed.



Of course, as many have pointed out, WotC is going increasingly digital. I suspect that it will soon (next year or two, and certainly in 5e if they maintain strategy) become the case that they more or less drop off the Amazon rankings entirely. This will not speak to the health of D&D or to WotC's earnings as a company from it...but to the death of WotC's print line in favor of the growth of WotC's digital line.


I've seen a fair amount of anecdotal, sales rankings, quotes from retailers, etc. that all points to Paizo's books being stronger at this point than WotC's. Any of it by itself is "one man's opinion/observation". However, at this point, that's a lot of "one men". I've also not recently seen any info lately saying the converse; that WotC is outselling Paizo.


But, as I said above, this may only speak to the print market, which WotC seems to intentionally be withdrawing from in favor of Digital...This could potentially be their business plan, rather than a "failure" of them to sell 4e books.

 

[Dice4Hire]

I have no doubt Pathfinder is selling, and probably selling well. Paizo has stated time and again that they are very happy with how things are going.

I am very happy Paizo and Pathfinder are doing well. It is nice to see two companies (regardless of who you believe is #1 or #2) competing with each other. It has been a long time, if ever that there has been strong competition in RPGs.

Competition has to be good for the hobby in the short and long term.