New WOTC Survey
- Thread starter Phaezen
- Start date
Windjammer
Adventurer
Well, the function of the survey, I think, specifically targets people who currently don't use DDI mostly because they don't have any of the payment means which DDI allows. I'm not even sure it allows Paypal, but that would aleady help oversease customers a great deal. WotC is apparently looking into extending the options of how you pay them, so as to extend their current customer base. The final question (in my survey) was whether there should be an option to pay using your Amazon account. Now that's interesting.
Lord Mhoram
Hero
I wouldn't mind buying my D&D insider at amazon rather than the way it is done now.
Dannager
First Post
I think it's premature to assume that's what this means. Let's not jump to conclusions and begin a whole new set of wild rumors for the frothing masses to latch onto without having all the information.
Windjammer
Adventurer
I think you're misreading your own quote. Here's my own take, if conspiracy theory is what you want.
WotC recently started 'Encounter Nights' as a measure to promote the waning brick-mortar stores. The fewer stores exist, the fewer stuff WotC sell. WotC has concrete figures of store feedback from events such as these, or similar stuff like the "Game Days" for important releases (like the 2's corebooks in 2009).
A second pillar to fight waning sales is to jump on board of online sales even more fully than they do now. Look at Paizo, which sells comparatively little to Amazon but allows purchase of all their product at their own website. What if wizards.com follows suit? What if, instead of clicking the 'Find a Retailer Near You' button that currently adorns all their product pages we have a 'Put This Into My Shopping Cart'?
See, if they thought about that, they would need information like the following:
1. Which payment options would our website need to accept to allow for a high number of purchases?
2. Should we go Paizo's route and stop selling stuff at Amazon at all, and instead bag all those massive discounts by dishing them out at our site? If we do so, how about giving DDI-subscribers product discounts? Would that be an additional incentive for people to get into DDI?
Obviously I'm getting ahead of myself here. But I think the 2009 Holiday Bundle which effectively bundled physical product with (a discount on) a DDI subscription is the way to go. WotC' initial idea was to tie the digital and physical product strongly together by having promotion codes for electronic product inside the books. Well, even if that idea turns out to be unworkable, they are interested in tying the two together. If so, better start selling both at your website.
I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
I don't think that's what this implies. It seems to me to have been more about what kinds of things you're willing to pay with. "Credit card, paypal, or buy a card at Wal-Mart?" kind of thin. WoW and other online games do a lot of those "gift cards," walk into a convenience store and you should be able to find a little display. I even think there are DDO cards.
[sblock=Rampant Speculation]
Rampant Speculation:
This could be part of how WotC is thinking about selling pdf-ish books again. Amazon, with the Kindle, and Apple, with the iPad (presumably linked throuth the iTunes store, what with its proprietary formats and all) are all big on copy protection for the works that they put on there, and this could have assuaged WotC's piracy paranoia (not that stopping pdf sales have, at all, curbed piracy of WotC's books, but whatchagonnado). The specificity with which Amazon and iTunes were called out as potential marketplaces leads me to speculate that they're tentatively talking about e-publishing via these routes. The publishing industry in general is looking seriously at the iPad espeically (and have been peering at the Kindle for a while).
My own view is that, if they do this, it will have two effects. The first is that people who would buy e-books would buy D&D e-books. I can fully imagine using an iPad or a Kindle or some other e-reader at the table in place of having a fully stocked library. Heck, 75% of the appeal of an e-reader is that you don't need to lug books around. The tabletop RPG market should be all over this like white on rice.
But the lockdowns that Amazon and Apple both demand are controversial, and, ultimately, they limit the usefulness of the book in exchange for patting publishers on the head and assuring them that it'll all be okay (without ever actually curbing piracy, of course). It's a false sense of security they offer, and I am personally not a fan of being treated like a criminal when I make a purchase, so for me, this would not be something I personally would probably invest much in. I put books on my shelf and use them or the DDI at the table, and I'm pretty happy with that.
That said, with less..."sensitive"...folks, I think this would do some good business. If the e-published books are cheaper than the print books, and provide you enough so that you can look up stuff at the table, I think they would sell pretty well. Convenience is a big factor, and not lugging around a library to your game sessions, if they're not at your house, can be a big boon.
And, anyway, this is all rampant speculation. This could just be about whether or not it's worth it to set up a DDI gift card and/or e-check system, to maybe reach out to some parts of the audience they're not getting because of a problem with the credit card thing. It doesn't HAVE to be about e-publishing.
The Amazon and iTunes questions make me think that they might be leaning in that direction, but I might just be talking too much with my publishing-industry buddies.
[/sblock]
Glyfair
Explorer
Besides all that has been mentioned above...
WotC did hint that in the future you wouldn't automatically get access to all previous Dungeons/Dragons when you subscribe. They were waiting until they had the function to allow people to buy individual back issues and/or to make sure subscribers had access to those issues that are part of their DDI membership.
Steel_Wind
Legend
I've never really understood why some online storefronts - especially those that target gamers - don't make more use of Paypal.
I have complained to Paizo about this in the past. For whatever reason, they have not added it so I simply got tired of the issue and have stopped asking. For this reason - they don't get my money directly (other than at Gencon) but only indirectly. Honestly - it's their loss.
It's their business and they'll do what they'll do, I guess. It's my money and I'll do what I'll do.
It would be interesting to see WotC take Paypal. Not a whole lot of good reasons not to do so, imo.
I have complained to Paizo about this in the past. For whatever reason, they have not added it so I simply got tired of the issue and have stopped asking. For this reason - they don't get my money directly (other than at Gencon) but only indirectly. Honestly - it's their loss.
It's their business and they'll do what they'll do, I guess. It's my money and I'll do what I'll do.
It would be interesting to see WotC take Paypal. Not a whole lot of good reasons not to do so, imo.
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