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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 4096832" data-attributes="member: 58197">There is money to be made for third-party companies, both in switching to 4E and sticking with 3.X.  But which is the right choice depends on the company.The companies that switch to 4E get to compete in the bigger market.  Realistically, the vast majority of players will eventually make the jump, or else drop out of the hobby and not be replaced.  Whether or not you think 4E is better than 3.5, the fact remains that one of those editions will be fully supported by Wizards and one will not; one will be the most up-to-date edition and one will not; one will have a big marketing operation pushing it and one will not; most tellingly, one will be on bookstore shelves and one will not.  The only way 4E doesn't end up dominating the market is if it sucks so badly that it drives most gamers away from D&D entirely.For companies that stay with 3.X, though, there will still be a market, since there will always be some holdouts.  That market will be a much smaller one, but intensely loyal.  The company that supports it--and I don't think there will be room for more than one or two--will probably make its living by sticking to a tried-and-true formula, not innovating or experimenting much.  This is not to say that 3.X enthusiasts don't want innovation or experimentation; but the market will be too small to support much of that.The real question is, which companies will do best with which approach?  I'm fairly sure most of the big names in third-party d20 will have to switch over.  They're too big to sustain themselves exclusively off 3.X diehards.  If they don't switch, they'll have to scale back considerably.I think we may also see a small renaissance of alternative game systems.  The much more restrictive new license does not look like encouraging the creation of games like Iron Heroes.  At the same time, games created under the old OGL will wither and die as 3.X mechanics cease to be a well-known universal.  Their death will create openings for new systems......or so I hope.  The other possibility is that, with the OGL having killed off a lot of competing systems, and the OGL itself no longer being supported by WotC, the RPG market under 4E will be even more completely dominated by D&D than it is now.</blockquote>

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