Is Wotc Slipping?

[Perram]

Yes, they are.

Well, WotC has to actually ship product in order for it to sell, and lately... they haven't. It's been minor accessories for months now since they've "reorganized" 4e. Their upcoming products are spread far out, and DDI keeps having delays.

If they aren't putting books on the shelves... there are no books to sell! They may be shifting online as their primary focus, I don't know. But I don't see that as a winning strategy, at least not the way they are handling it.

I have no doubts that Pathfinder is doing extremely well right now, and I hope they are doing fantastic. But it's easy to win a race when your opponent doesn't even show up to the starting gate.

 

[Aus_Snow]

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.

Paizo is also making plenty of digital sales - albeit in a different way - most especially of extremely reasonably priced core book (and key supplement) PDFs. $10 each is very tempting, even for those who mightn't favour PDFs in general, or who are only thinking about getting into, for example, using a notebook PC or an iPad for gaming.

As for actual books, they sell them via their own website, as well (paizo.com) - and that, along with a number of other things, of course will not factored into Amazon stats. Like, I've noticed a good selection of Pathfinder books in every FLGS I've seen (been traveling a bit, lately) - and I've not got the impression they just sit there, for very long at all. For instance.

Which is to say, I'm pretty sure they'd be doing just fine anyway, even without "winning the Amazon race" or what have you.

 

[S'mon]

In my LGS (Orc's Nest) the first RPG materials you see going in are the Pathfinder Adventure Paths, at the top of the magazine rack by the door. The next thing you see is the WoTC 4e D&D material at the top of the RPG shelves facing the door, and the third thing is the Pathfinder books on the shelf beneath 4e. Non Pathfinder/WotC material is relegated to relative obscurity round the back.

 

[Umbran]

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 don't think anyone is making a claim that Pathfinder is not selling well.

I think the real issue is, lacking real historical data, there's not much way to tell exactly what that means. Everyone *feels* they know what it means - but feeling and knowing are not the same thing, especially when the feeling usually falls along usually the lines of what game or company the person happens to prefer.

To draw proper conclusions, we ought to compare apples to apples. The same retailers who are anecdotally telling us that Pathfinder sells well also mention (anecdotally) that the greatest number of sales for a given product tend to be in the first month it is out, and that sales drop off over time.

Pathfinder is roughly a year younger than 4e is. So, all other things being equal, we'd expect sales of, say, Pathfinder core rulebooks today to perhaps be comparable to sales of 4e core books a year ago, rather than today. All other things are not equal, though. We'd also want to adjust for differences in sales bought on by economic change (and this time last year was notably worse for many wallets, you may recall).

The complications don't stop there. Look at the core rules for the games - the three 4e books are equivalent to only two books for Pathfinder. So, how do you compare? By number of units? By gross sales? By net profits to the companies? By some projection of how many players those sales represent?

Amazon sales ranking doesn't give us what we need to compare these things properly.

 

[czak]

I don't think anyone is making a claim that Pathfinder is not selling well.

I think the real issue is, lacking real historical data, there's not much way to tell exactly what that means.

Are there any bayesian modelers on the boards?

 

[rogueattorney]

As a third party observer (as in, not a player of either 3e/pf or 4e), I think all that can be definitively said is that:

1. Paizo is doing well with Pathfinder. Probably better than anyone expected they would.

2. WotC is flailing about a bit with their 4e products. They seem to be looking for a direction, or have decided to change directions and are mid-stream in doing so.

#1 and #2 do not necessarily have anything to do with each other and #2 does not necessarily have anything to do with WotC's 4e sales.

 

[Deset Gled]

I think it's undeniable that Pathfinder has gained significant market share, but there's no real way to tell if D+D is losing market share. Pathfinder may be taking some customers from D+D, but they may also taking them from White Wolf, etc.

Market share changes get even harder to quantify when you take legacy systems into account. If Pathfinder manages to steal some market share from D+D 3e players that didn't plan on upgrading to 4e, has D+D 4e lost market share, or has Pathfinder simply expanded into an untapped market? I'm sure Pathfinder advocates will tell you the former is the case, while 4e guys will swear by the latter.

 

[Umbran]

I think it's undeniable that Pathfinder has gained significant market share, but there's no real way to tell if D+D is losing market share. Pathfinder may be taking some customers from D+D, but they may also taking them from White Wolf, etc.

Or "taking" fewer customers than naive interpretation of sales would suggest.

I own 3e, Pathfinder, and 4e rulebooks. I'll play any of those games. I also own some nWoD books, and will play those games, too. Sale of a Pathfinder book to me does not mean I have been "taken" from the 4e market. It is not valid to assume that people who buy Pathfinder are not also buying 4e products, or vice versa.

 

[S'mon]

The evidence does not show Pathfinder is 'beating' 4e. I just think it's interesting that the evidence we have does seem to show that the D&D brand is no longer the 900 lb gorilla in the RPG world - if 4e D&D is still a 900 lb gorilla, then Pathfinder would appear to be a 700 lb+ gorilla. Because not since the Vampire craze has any RPG come anywhere *near* to challenging the D&D brand's dominance of the marketplace. That seems to me that it has to be significant. BTW I play & GM 4e, I have hundreds of pounds of 4e stuff and the only Pathfinder stuff is the first parts of 2 APs, so I'm not personally contributing to this change.

 

[Umbran]

Because not since the Vampire craze has any RPG come anywhere *near* to challenging the D&D brand's dominance of the marketplace. That seems to me that it has to be significant.

Has to be? I dunno. You use White Wolf as the analog - ultimately they rose, but didn't really challenge. D&D had a major resurgence with 3e. Now, White Wolf seems to be moving away from the tabletop RPG market altogether, with their new software masters.

Which says to me that sales/popularity on the order of a year doesn't speak much to what will happen on the order of decades.