jdrakeh said:
Regarding NWoD popularity, I believe that it's currently the #3 or #4 best-selling game line according to the polls of retailers conducted by Comics & Games Retailer (no, the polls aren't perfect, but they're far less skewed than an Amazon-only poll or an eBay search). Locally (here in the Springs), I think that it clocks in just behind D&D and Exalted in terms of popularity.
Yup, I have the State of the Gaming Industry article in the issue that should be hitting stores this week, and NWoD + Exalted (i.e., essentially everything WW did in 2006 that registered even a blip in sales) came in at the #2 position. Here's the general breakdown for 2006 RPG sales in market share (hobby stores only, not counting big box or mass market or PDF or direct to consumer):
#1: Wizards of the Coast: 58.37%
#2: White Wolf: 12.79%
#3: Palladium Books: 3.92%
#4: Goodman Games: 2.96%
#5: Troll Lord Games: 2.50%
#6: Mongoose: 2.34%
#7: Green Ronin: 2.04%
Less than 2% but greater than 1%: MWP, Privateer, Black Industries, FanPro, Hero Games, and Steve Jackson Games.
This measures sales by units, not by dollars. If it were by dollars, WotC and WW would ahve even bigger shares, as their products generally have higher MSRP's and can be sold for that price much more often at stores than second-tier products, which are more often discounted, especially backstock products.
Note that this measures what retailers sold to consumers; not what retailers bought from distributors, nor what distributors bought from publishers. A LOT of the sales of Palladium products in 2006 were backstock, based on the appeal to the fans made by Palladium. Of course, that only worked until everyone was satiated, and then sales dropped again, waiting for new product to release...
That's one of the problems with Necromancer, is that their fans have mostly already bought everything they released; they need to grow, but in order to grow, they need to generate new fans, and there's only so much you can do without having a big marketing budget...