Pathfinder 1E Pathfinder sales

[SteveC]

What happens next quarter doesn't change what happened this quarter. If the numbers next quarter indicate that D&D 4 book sales are beating Pathfinder book sales, then D&D 4 book sales will be beating Pathfinder book sales that quarter. Then a quarter after that, we'll get to discuss new numbers.

What will it take for this issue to be put at rest? For the numbers to one-sided. When one system clearly takes the top spot and holds it, then this issue will be put to rest. Next quarter is always just next quarter.

The thing is, the last numbers we saw showed WotC with the number one rating, and there certainly wasn't three months of "Pathfinder has dropped off in sales," posts. We heard how it was winning despite those numbers.

You make a very good point, though: the only thing that will settle this is for the balance to overwhelmingly reassert itself. Given the lack of WotC releases, they are unlikely to have a dramatic uptick in sales, so I'd expect to see a stalemate at best for the future, if not some dramatic eventual win for Paizo. After all, if you're not putting out product, there's nothing to buy.

I suspect that only a huge change on WotC's strategy would result in anything but that happening.

 

[Pentius]

In the mean time, it seems not a week goes by that I hear from someone else has has decided to drop 4E..... yeah yeah, just my ancedotes. Funny how my anecdotes fit the data so nicely.

Yeah, anecdotes. They don't mean much. I just started 4 new players on 4e, personally. One came to 4e from Rifts. You know I haven't heard anything about Rifts lately. I guess it's dead. My anecdotes line up with that assumption. Another came to 4e from 3.5. I guess we can call the edition wars over? Yeah, man, anecdotes.

No, because DDI doesn't sell group accounts.

No, they just sell accounts that happen to be accessible from multiple computers, and just happen to have cloud storage for more than an entire party's worth of characters in the character builder. They don't sell group accounts, they just happen to sell accounts that are easily and frequently used by the whole group.

As an aside, the least people I've ever seen using the same account is 2. The most is about 17. That one spanned three separate tables. But you know, anecdotes.

 

[IronWolf]

No, they just sell accounts that happen to be accessible from multiple computers, and just happen to have cloud storage for more than an entire party's worth of characters in the character builder. They don't sell group accounts, they just happen to sell accounts that are easily and frequently used by the whole group.

Which is of course a violation of the terms of service. From the EULA

1. Eligibility. The Software is available only to individuals eighteen (18) years of age and older at the time of installation. If you are between the ages of thirteen (13) and eighteen (18), your parent or guardian must complete the registration process to create an account with Wizards through the Dungeons & Dragons website (“Account”) and take full responsibility for all obligations under this License. Certain components of the Software may be available only to current subscribers of D&D Insider, and will be subject to all terms associated therewith, located at Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Subscription. You may not transfer, sell or share your Account with anyone, unless you are a parent or guardian, in which case you may permit one child to use the Account instead of yourself. YOU ARE LIABLE FOR ALL ACTIVITIES CONDUCTED THROUGH THE ACCOUNT.

 

[Pentius]

Which is of course a violation of the terms of service. From the EULA

Yes, of course. I would never condone or encourage such a breaking of the EULA. And of course every DDi member both reads and follows the fine print. We don't even need WotC to enforce it, because no one in the history of the internet has ever thought of sharing.

 

[IronWolf]

Yes, of course. I would never condone or encourage such a breaking of the EULA. And of course every DDi member both reads and follows the fine print. We don't even need WotC to enforce it, because no one in the history of the internet has ever thought of sharing.

My mistake. It had looked like from your previous post you were condoning piracy to support the boost of WotC numbers for your anecdote.

Whether everyone is doing it or not, it is still a violation of the EULA and somewhat frequently noted to be against the intent on the WotC forums as well for those that might not have taken time to read the EULA.

 

[Pentius]

My mistake. It had looked like from your previous post you were condoning piracy to support the boost of WotC numbers for your anecdote.

Whether everyone is doing it or not, it is still a violation of the EULA and somewhat frequently noted to be against the intent on the WotC forums as well for those that might not have taken time to read the EULA.

I definitely don't condone piracy for the sake of internet pissing matches about which game has more players.

 

[Zil]

Here is my issue: That buoy (and other scientific instrumentations) is MAGNITUDES more accurate than the sales data. If I had data to that precision, it would satisfy my margin of uncertainty. There is no publicly available data with a comparable accuracy.

Yep, I agree with you there. The data we get from the SLDMB (Self-locating datum marker buoy) is certainly of a much better quality than ICv2. However, the ICv2 data is somewhere between historical data (the worst) and our real time current data (the best).

The reason that sales data is being rejected is different than the reasons we would reject data from buoys (I could go on a rant about politicians not liking temperature data but I won't). When your agency gets that Position data, it must evaluate and compensate for that data because they know and trust the source.

What we do with our environmental data sources is rank them in terms of priority/confidence. We use some of them in a preemptive way, in some cases we blend them. We certainly don't consider all data sources as being equal or having the same errors.

If I was in some strange place where I had to make a life or death decision based on whether or not Pathdinder was outselling D&D, the data I have available does not let me do anything but make a broad speculation. I could not make a decision with confidence.

I certainly hope none of us ever have to make life and death decisions based on sales of Pathfinder or D&D!

The example was not meant to say that ICv2 or Amazon data is the equivalent to the best oceanographic data in our system, rather that there are a variety of relevant data sources that we can draw on with varying degrees of confidence. At the top end are SLDMBs and other measured on-scene environmental data while at the bottom end are the long term climatic data bases. Switching back to Pathfinder vs D&D sales, the long term data on D&D sales over the last decade falls at the bottom end with the quarterly ICv2 and Amazon data is somewhere between the bottom and what would be an analogous data source to our SLDMB. If I had to give the sales data analogies to our environmental data, I'd probably rank the ICv2 data as being model output (from a model that uses interviews with hobby stores to drive the model) or subjective data (for the Amazon.com snapshots). I might bump the Amazon data up a notch in priority if someone were taking readings for an extended period from that data source. These two data sources are certainly not as good as our on-scene SLDMB measured data, but it's good enough that the prediction skill will be improved by using it over using just the background historical data.

If a boat was out in the coast (I used to do High Frequency direction finding with the US NAVY when I was in, so pleased to meet you,

Canadian Coast Guard. Pleased to meet you as well.

and I used the position buoys to locate a vessel, I can be reasonably certain a simple search in that area would yield a vessel. If it did not I could conclude something bad happened.

If my buoys were of the icv2 variety, I would have an area, and merely be able to say: OK boys lets search there first, its our best BET. It would however be inconclusive if we could not find the boat.

Yep, I agree with this exactly. ICv2 coupled with the Amazon figures is our best bet for what is selling best in the book and hobby channels at the moment. My confidence is certainly not high enough that I would give it a 100% probability of success (to borrow the SAR planning terminology), but I'd say it's certainly better than 50% or what we would get if we were only looking at the long term historical data to make our decision.

 

[Dannager]

Nobody is convincing anyone of anything in this thread.

Nobody is convincing any of the participants, that's for certain. I'm contented to simply say my piece and be on with it; when I post in response to someone, it's not to sway their opinion but rather to provide a counterpoint to their argument that others will hopefully read along with the original post.

I appreciate that you acknowledge that I am consistent, however.

 

[Mournblade94]

Okay, no. This doesn't get to stand, no matter how much of a waste of time I feel arguing with you is. I don't want others drawing poor conclusions from the way you color what you present as data.

There are in excess of 50,000 active DDI subscriptions with associated community accounts. If we assume that 50% of DDI subscribers (a generous figure) also took the time to create community accounts, then we have over 100,000 DDI subcribers. D&D is designed for a group of five players and one DM, with roughly equal groups hitting both above and below that figure (another safe assumption), so we multiply by six. That gives us 600,000 players. If we assume that 50% of groups have DMs with DDI subscriptions (another generous figure), that gives us 1,200,000 total 4th Edition players. I remember seeing the 1,000,000 player number thrown around a few years back, so contrary to what you conclude, your own math exercise leads us to the conclusion that D&D is actually doing just fine. And the numbers that I used were conservative; in actuality, it is likely that the total is significantly higher.

From where are you getting these figures? It is not that I do not beleive the 50K figure is possible, but are you just speculating? The 1.2M players though is based on what you consider a safe assumption. I am also not seeing how you are doubling 50K to 100K. Why does creating a community account double that number?

 

[Dannager]

From where are you getting these figures? It is not that I do not beleive the 50K figure is possible, but are you just speculating? The 1.2M players though is based on what you consider a safe assumption. I am also not seeing how you are doubling 50K to 100K. Why does creating a community account double that number?

50,000+ is the number of active DDI subscribers who also have a registered WotC community account. We know this, because when you create a community account and it is tied to a DDI account, you are automatically added to the DDI Community Group, and that group lists the number of people who belong to it (you cannot join manually) as well over 50,000. We also know that if your subscription ends, you are removed from this group, so it is generally considered the lowest possible number of current DDI subscribers.

I'm doubling it to 100,000 subscribers because that 50,000 figure only accounts for those who both have an active DDI subscription and have created a community account. In my experience, most subscribers don't bother registering to post on the forums. However, that's my experience, so I'm setting it at 50% to account for the possibility that my experience is non-representative.