PHB2 sold out!

[Charwoman Gene]

What field do your businesses operate in? Understanding "markets" is not sufficient. Knowing how to run a successful and well marketed restaurant is very different than running a car company.

Restaurant looks to keep selling the same product to the same customers over and of course, and their "active" pool would pretty be everyone who has eaten there in the past.

Car company? Lets say there are 60 million Honda owners in America. Honda releases a new line of cars? Their Market? 60 million people. If they sold 10 million new cars they be ecstatic.

D&D is more like a car than a restyaurant

 

[Pramas]

The ratio of players to purchasers has always been a problem for the RPG business. Six or more people can play a game for year easily with one book between them. Turning players into buyers is an ongoing struggle for any RPG company.

 

[Treebore]

The ratio of players to purchasers has always been a problem for the RPG business. Six or more people can play a game for year easily with one book between them. Turning players into buyers is an ongoing struggle for any RPG company.

Well then I have always been in the "unusual" groups, because every group I have played in, from South Carolina to California, everyone had Players Handbooks, many of them also had the DMG's. Whether we played D&D, Shadowrun, Mutants and Masterminds, L5R, GURPS, whatever.

At least now we know WOTC's sales are no where close to being their estimated 6 million D&D players world wide. Not for their DMG or PH.

Plus notice their wording, they talked about their core rules sales as a "set". So you can take those hundreds of thousands sold and divide by 3. So that means there are fewer than 333,333 4E PH's in the hands of the 6 million D&D players world wide. Less than the same of DMG's and MM's.

So I was probably being generous to even suggest that close to 1/6th of WOTC's own estimated 6 million gamers own a 4E core rule book, it would be more like 1/18.

Granted, there probably were not an equal number of each core book sold, but that still does not change the over all implications. Which is that its closer to being 1 in 18 of the 6 million players world wide own 4E books rather than 1 in 6.

That significantly changes the perception of WOTC D&D dominance.

 

[Keefe the Thief]

snip

Now, this number does not take into account the people that bought the Corebooks and sold them again. If we divide your 333,333 PHBs by a number i pull out of thin air, lets say 2,1, we only have 158730 corebooks sold. My feeling tells me that this is considerably less what the corebooks of my favourite game sold, even if i do not know the numbers for that.

Anyway, the outlook is DIRE.

PS: i never ran a successful business.

 

[Maggan]

It's estimated that about 6 million people (worldwide) play D&D.

Cheers!

Interesting. But it's important to note that 6 million people playing D&D does not correlate perfectly to a 6 million heads strong active market. I.e. not everyone of these 6 million players will be poised to spend money on WotC's products as they are released.

There's a market potential there, but that potential is a lot more complicated than "they're playing D&D so they should buy stuff NOW or else it's a failure!" or conversely "yay, there are 6 million people there to sell to! Success!"

I'd guess that many of those 6 million players are playing legacy versions of D&D, and are content with that. So while they might be considered a market potential, they obviously are a lot weaker as an immediate commercial opportunity than those who want to play the latest edition.

And the cost to get entrenched older edition D&D players is a lot higher per customer converted than going after the more edition mobile subset of customers, so selling D&D4 to them might be a losing proposition business wise ... in the short term.

Because there's also a matter of short term vs. long term strategies. 6 million players of D&D is a market potential, but only if you look at it long term. No one should expect WotC to convert the entire player base to a new edition in one year. That's the short term strategy and targets different groups within the total market potential. To convert other groups, other more long term strategies are needed.

What percentage of converts is a failure or a success? And where is the breaking point where the cost of aquiring customers/converts is larger than the profit from doing so?

I don't know, maybe those who have had insight into WotC could shed a light on that?

/M

 

[Treebore]

Now, this number does not take into account the people that bought the Corebooks and sold them again. If we divide your 333,333 PHBs by a number i pull out of thin air, lets say 2,1, we only have 158730 corebooks sold. My feeling tells me that this is considerably less what the corebooks of my favourite game sold, even if i do not know the numbers for that.

Anyway, the outlook is DIRE.

PS: i never ran a successful business.

Well, even so there are still about 333,000 books out there presumably being used, whether kept by the original buyer, or resold, they are presumably all being used by their owners. So with that assumption that still means only 1/12 to 1/18 of WOTC's own estimated market fo 6 million D&D players owns a 4E core rules book. It definitely means there are no more than 333,333 groups out there, since we also assume every DM would own the DMG.

So if that is close to accurate, and WOTC's assumption of an average of 6 players per group, they may actually have nearly 2 million people playing 4E, but that would still mean there is only one PH and MM is owned by each of those groups. Which I know to be wrong in many groups. Like when I played at the last WW D&D day this past months, everyone playing had their own PH. The 4 DM's running the games each had a DMG.

So at best WOTC may have close to 2 million players of 4E, but it is far more likely that the number is well below one million, probably around 500,000.

 

[Jack99]

So yes, this has serious possible implications for the D&D brand and WOTC.

Assumptions are fun, huh. Except I doubt that you do get on best-seller lists with the kind of numbers you wish 4e has sold.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Well then I have always been in the "unusual" groups, because every group I have played in, from South Carolina to California, everyone had Players Handbooks, many of them also had the DMG's. Whether we played D&D, Shadowrun, Mutants and Masterminds, L5R, GURPS, whatever.

And that's exactly my experience with D&D 4, too.
Basically all of us buy most of the supplements. Core rulebooks anyway.

And you know what. We are both on EN World, another member at least lurks, and a third member of my group is often on the WotC boards.

Does EN World have hundreds of thousands of members?

What I am saying is that we are probably in a special group - the "hardcore" gamer - even if hardcore only means we get to play D&D only every one, two or four weeks. And so will be most of our friends.

 

[Fenes]

I always consider the DMs more likely to be hardcore gamers and visting forums. And I consider DMs to have a levered influence on the gaming habits of their groups - I know that I won't run games I don't like, for once, which has a rather big influence on what kind of games my group plays.

So, I'd not dismiss the influence of ENWorld and other forums lightly.

 

[Nymrohd]

The ratio of players to purchasers has always been a problem for the RPG business. Six or more people can play a game for year easily with one book between them. Turning players into buyers is an ongoing struggle for any RPG company.

And that is why my players always get PHBs for their birthdays