Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Jer" data-source="post: 3493658" data-attributes="member: 19857">There are some things to take into consideration here, though.&nbsp; This will be the first offering by Wizards of &quot;official&quot; D&amp;D product that is only purchasable on-line.&nbsp; There will be no print version of their DI stuff (except for collections, and there is no indication that these will collect everything).&nbsp; In fact, this is one of the few &quot;good&quot; reasons to stop producing the magazines and focus on the on-line DI stuff -- being able to claim to be the only source for periodic &quot;official&quot; updates at a price cheaper than buying supplements is a powerful marketing tool (something that Paizo used to great effect while they had the license for Dragon and Dungeon).Another thing to take into account is that this doesn't look like its a &quot;buy a supplement&quot; model.&nbsp; This seems closer to a &quot;membership&quot; model, where you pay a fee to be a member to a website for premium content.&nbsp; The content probably won't be updated &quot;once-a-month&quot; as a magazine is, but probably more along the lines of the &quot;daily&quot; updates that the Wizards D&amp;D website gets.&nbsp; And once you &quot;subscribe&quot; you get it all -- all of the stuff that was there before you subscribed, as well as everything that comes out while you're subscribed.&nbsp; If they have a reasonable subscription cost to the site, and if they can keep it going for a year or so, that's a lot of content -- a lot more than buying a PDF for the same cost as a hardcover (as the current Wizards pricing model stands).&nbsp; Plus, as a website, you can have different material than a magazine does -- online tools for managing a campaign or characters combined with even weekly updates and a reasonable price makes the DI package start to look attractive.(As a disclaimer, I'm still not completely sold on the whole &quot;DI&quot; thing myself.&nbsp; I'm an old curmudgeon and I like my paper magazines, thank you very much.&nbsp; But I can see the potential advantages, and I can see the potential for this to be a big thing.&nbsp; We'll see if it works out in the end.)That's true.&nbsp; But there are other attractive elements of a digital magazine as well.&nbsp; For starters, you cut out two layers of middle-men who run the newsstand side of the operation -- distributors and newsstand vendors.&nbsp; By cutting them out of the operation you can cut the prices to the readers while still making more money per &quot;copy&quot; sold than you do in a magazine model.&nbsp; You also eliminate returns of unsold magazines as an issue.&nbsp; Also, you no longer have to deal with flaky fulfillment houses for subscribers or with problems with the US Postal Service, who seem to treat magazine delivery as optional in some parts of the country.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Jer, post: 3493658, member: 19857"] There are some things to take into consideration here, though. This will be the first offering by Wizards of "official" D&D product that is only purchasable on-line. There will be no print version of their DI stuff (except for collections, and there is no indication that these will collect everything). In fact, this is one of the few "good" reasons to stop producing the magazines and focus on the on-line DI stuff -- being able to claim to be the only source for periodic "official" updates at a price cheaper than buying supplements is a powerful marketing tool (something that Paizo used to great effect while they had the license for Dragon and Dungeon). Another thing to take into account is that this doesn't look like its a "buy a supplement" model. This seems closer to a "membership" model, where you pay a fee to be a member to a website for premium content. The content probably won't be updated "once-a-month" as a magazine is, but probably more along the lines of the "daily" updates that the Wizards D&D website gets. And once you "subscribe" you get it all -- all of the stuff that was there before you subscribed, as well as everything that comes out while you're subscribed. If they have a reasonable subscription cost to the site, and if they can keep it going for a year or so, that's a lot of content -- a lot more than buying a PDF for the same cost as a hardcover (as the current Wizards pricing model stands). Plus, as a website, you can have different material than a magazine does -- online tools for managing a campaign or characters combined with even weekly updates and a reasonable price makes the DI package start to look attractive. (As a disclaimer, I'm still not completely sold on the whole "DI" thing myself. I'm an old curmudgeon and I like my paper magazines, thank you very much. But I can see the potential advantages, and I can see the potential for this to be a big thing. We'll see if it works out in the end.) That's true. But there are other attractive elements of a digital magazine as well. For starters, you cut out two layers of middle-men who run the newsstand side of the operation -- distributors and newsstand vendors. By cutting them out of the operation you can cut the prices to the readers while still making more money per "copy" sold than you do in a magazine model. You also eliminate returns of unsold magazines as an issue. Also, you no longer have to deal with flaky fulfillment houses for subscribers or with problems with the US Postal Service, who seem to treat magazine delivery as optional in some parts of the country. [/QUOTE]

Verification