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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 5123289" data-attributes="member: 2067">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. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> [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. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> [/sblock]</blockquote>

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