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NPR - The Curse of the Black Lotus & D&D
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<blockquote data-quote="innerdude" data-source="post: 6562436" data-attributes="member: 85870"><p>It's pretty well documented by Ryan Dancey and others that 4e's "massive pile of never-ending splat" was a direct result of the WotC team trying to push Dungeons and Dragons to hit enough sales to be considered a "core" Hasbro brand. </p><p></p><p>To hit the sales numbers needed (what was it again? $50 million in a fiscal reporting year? Does that sound right?) in an industry that requires you to <em>sell product</em>, you have to have product to sell. </p><p></p><p>Since there was NO CHANCE of 4e being OGL, and the GSL being a disaster for actually getting third-party content providers on board, if 4e was going to hit "core brand" numbers, it was going to have to do it with WotC providing the vast bulk of the product. From this perspective it should be utterly unsurprising to anyone just how quickly and voluminously WotC tried to fill the "product vacuum" on its own for 4e. Essentials is proof of this --- why else would Wizards try pushing an entirely different product line in an entirely different format that ended up mostly confusing its target consumers? Answer: <em>To have sale-able product on shelves</em>.</p><p></p><p>5e is clearly being driven by an entirely different perspective / paradigm / business outlook than 4e. I think 5e is a realization by the WotC team that D&D is not really EVER going to be a "core" Hasbro brand. The $50 million annual sales for the brand simply isn't happening as "just" a core RPG product line. So why not build a sustainable, if less profitable in the short term, product that also tries to bridge the gaps between generations of players---which is exactly what they did.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="innerdude, post: 6562436, member: 85870"] It's pretty well documented by Ryan Dancey and others that 4e's "massive pile of never-ending splat" was a direct result of the WotC team trying to push Dungeons and Dragons to hit enough sales to be considered a "core" Hasbro brand. To hit the sales numbers needed (what was it again? $50 million in a fiscal reporting year? Does that sound right?) in an industry that requires you to [I]sell product[/I], you have to have product to sell. Since there was NO CHANCE of 4e being OGL, and the GSL being a disaster for actually getting third-party content providers on board, if 4e was going to hit "core brand" numbers, it was going to have to do it with WotC providing the vast bulk of the product. From this perspective it should be utterly unsurprising to anyone just how quickly and voluminously WotC tried to fill the "product vacuum" on its own for 4e. Essentials is proof of this --- why else would Wizards try pushing an entirely different product line in an entirely different format that ended up mostly confusing its target consumers? Answer: [I]To have sale-able product on shelves[/I]. 5e is clearly being driven by an entirely different perspective / paradigm / business outlook than 4e. I think 5e is a realization by the WotC team that D&D is not really EVER going to be a "core" Hasbro brand. The $50 million annual sales for the brand simply isn't happening as "just" a core RPG product line. So why not build a sustainable, if less profitable in the short term, product that also tries to bridge the gaps between generations of players---which is exactly what they did. [/QUOTE]
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