PHB2 sold out!

[Jack99]

Well, I do not.

And another point about this discussion: I have a feeling there has been a significant amount of buyers of 4e that do not bother to play the game at all (no groups or whatsoever). At least for the core books.

I agree. But with the PHB2 being a smash hit, it would indicate that quite a few people are still playing the game. So, maybe 4e alienated a lot of the 3.5 guard, but instead brought in a lot of new players. Which kinda makes sense.

From my experience you need a surprisingly low number of sales to get on bestseller lists.

And yet, no other RPG books seem to make their way there. If 4e was doing so badly as some suggest, we should see other RPG books up there.

 

[lutecius]

There is no contradiction.

They can exceed their expectations, only to find out that they could have gotten even more if there was no piracy. That is hurting. [...]

Both seem plausible to me. Sales could be exceeding expectations, but there could also be some indication that sales would be exceeding expectations even more, if not for the pirating of PDF releases. (I'm not sure that's true, just possible.) In other words, whether sales are good or bad overall, WotC could still have reasons to think that pirated PDFs were causing them harm.

The problem is there is no such indication.
The music industry losses point to sales being hurt by illegal downloads. And even if piracy is the most likely cause, it's hard to measure its real impact.

If 4e is doing as well as expected, let alone better, nothing indicates it could have sold significantly more.
Increased piracy alone (assuming wotc can measure that) certainly doesn't.

I'm not saying wotc shouldn't sue. My point is that either sales aren't as good as some suggested or the recent decision to pull pdfs was misguided (well, it was anyway but that's the other thread)

 

[billd91]

And yet, no other RPG books seem to make their way there. If 4e was doing so badly as some suggest, we should see other RPG books up there.

How do you figure that? 4e stuff could appear on best seller lists, beat out competitors, and still tank, particularly if its overhead is relatively higher or it isn't making strong enough inroads into its market for long term viability. There's no particular reason that other RPG books would have to appear in best seller lists at all if 4e were doing badly.

For more info on best seller lists: Bestseller - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
It does an interesting job of explaining why being a "best seller" may not tell you a whole heck of a lot.

 

[xechnao]

snip

Are you calculating for one or three print runs?
Moreover can we be sure if their numbers apply to one core book or the three of the core books.
Is MM and DMG in the third run too? Are the hundreds of thousands refer to PHB? I am confused about all this

 

[Treebore]

*raises hand*

I bought the core books and still have them.

I don't play the game.

I was a sale for WOTC, but do I count as one of the 6 million people who play D&D? Even if I'm playing an edition that's no longer supported? What's their criteria for a "D&D player"? is it limited to people who are playing the most recent edition?

Well, when I was figuring out rough numbers I was also talking with the assumption that all sold books were also being used by who owned them. So if there are significant amounts of 4E Core book owners who also are not playing 4E, that weakens WOTC's perceived dominance as well.

 

[Brown Jenkin]

Are you calculating for one or three print runs?

That is for two sold out print runs + part of a third.

Moreover can we be sure if their numbers apply to one core book or the three of the core books.
Is MM and DMG in the third run too? Are the hundreds of thousands refer to PHB? I am confused about all this

I am being conservative and figure that those numbers are for just PHBs.

 

[Treebore]

I agree. But with the PHB2 being a smash hit, it would indicate that quite a few people are still playing the game. So, maybe 4e alienated a lot of the 3.5 guard, but instead brought in a lot of new players. Which kinda makes sense.



And yet, no other RPG books seem to make their way there. If 4e was doing so badly as some suggest, we should see other RPG books up there.

Smash hit? By who's estimation? By WOTC's? Well lets consider something here, for years we have known about WOTC's claim of "6 Million Gamers World Wide", or at least I have known about it. During all of those years they refused to mention any number for how many books they sold.

So before now, when anyone tried to guess at how many books WOTC sold you would derive estimates from having a customer base of 6 million people.

WOTC also said the "typical" gamer group has 6 people in it.

So from there we would possibly decide to "estimate" that each of those groups probably on average owned 3 PH books and one DMG and one MM. So that would mean half of thsoe 6 million gamers world wide have a PH, and 1 million of those 6 million have each bought a DMG and a MM, so a total of 5 Million CORE rule books should have been sold, since the perception pushed by WOTC is that there are 6 MILLION people playing D&D out there, presumably their 4E D&D, or 3E D&D back when they first started saying there are 6 million players out there.

Now we know, for a FACT, that there are far fewer than 5 million total Core rule books sold, in fact we now know that there are less than a grand total of one million all of the Core rule books sold. So if there really are 6 million D&D gamers, world wide, over 5 million of them are NOT playing 4E.

In fact I am now suspecting that saying there are 2 million table top RPG players, world wide, is probably an overly high estimate, and that 6 Million is a highly inflated lie to begin with.

Or if there are 6 Million D&D players out there, and lets also keep in mind that WOTC always specified D&D players, that the vast majority of them are actually playing editions OTHER than 4E. IE "Old School D&D" is not only alive and well, but is the dominant "type" of gaming going on among D&D players.

IT certainly can't be 4E, given that we now know only "hundreds of thousands" of the core 3 rule books have even been sold, let alone how many are actually being used for play.

So I definitely find WOTC's claim of "6 million D&D gamers world wide" very highly suspect, and we now know for a certainty that if there actually are 6 million D&D players world wide, less than a million of them are playing 4E.

Like I said elsehwere, the true number of 4E players is at most 2 million, and thats only if 1 in 6 own a set of core books. If 3 in 6 own core books its 1 million, if everyone who plays owns a book, then its less than 500,000 people playing 4E.

All of these "assumptions" can be factually derived from WOTC's court room document admission to selling only "hundreds of thousands of core rule books". In particular the possible maximums.

 

[ExploderWizard]

You stated that their PRIMARY GOAL was to have no legally available WotC electronic content outside of DDi. You have no evidence that was their "primary goal."

Direct from Hasbro? No. Would it be the kind of goal that would be shared with the public? No.

The goal was picked out logically based upon the action taken. The stated goal was to prevent piracy. The stated reason says that 3E and older pdf material was pulled to prevent piracy so that customers would purchase the abundant amount of such printed product. The small problem here is that such product isn't being printed anymore. Therefore, the reason for such a move has nothing to do with piracy. Since the official explanation is pure BS there must be another one. The primary goal I selected was one possible answer. I am willing to listen to others that make sense. None of this is proof of an "evil conspiracy".

There is a difference between an evil conspiracy and stupid business practices. WOTC is not evil, and it is also not Microsoft. Trying to market tabletop rpgs like MS markets operating systems through forced obsolecence isn't evil, its just plain dumb.

 

[Ourph]

I just don't get people who can see the words "sold out" and "bestseller list" in connection with a 4e book and come to the conclusion that 4e must be failing. Really? Seriously?

 

[D'karr]

The goal was picked out logically based upon the action taken. The stated goal was to prevent piracy.

Since the official explanation is pure BS there must be another one.

I believe that someone in an "official" capacity mentioned that they are looking at other ways of implementing DRM.

If you are hemorrhaging, usually the first line of treatment is to stop the bleeding. Often by any means necessary. Sometimes a tourniquet is the only way to do that, and sometimes using a tourniquet means that you lose a limb.

What if WotC figured that PDF's that they provide are part of that hemorrhage? What if those products that are out of print are also being pirated from the copies that WotC provides. Then maybe their actions are not pure BS after all.

What if WotC estimated that at the present moment the sell of legal PDFs that they provide was being used to promote piracy. They might have concluded that the best manner of stopping their "legal" pdfs from being used for that purpose was to look at better methods of DRM, but while they are looking at those methods they decided to stop the bleeding.

If WotC figured that the way they were doing DRM and the contracts that they had with online distributors can be implemented in a better way. A way to reduce the chance of their products being pirated, then maybe their actions are not pure BS at all.

The problem is that to do that, they figured they needed to stop the bleeding and they figured the best way was to stop all "legal" distribution.

Does that mean that piracy will go away? Absolutely not. However, if they put their products back on the market with a better way of enforcing what they want, it makes sense. Will it mean piracy will go away? No. But if they can reduce the possibility on their end, it makes business sense.

In addition WotC is also pursuing legal action against some people that allegedly distributed their property illegally. So maybe they decided to circle the wagons and regroup.

BTW, I have about as much proof about this theory "logically based on the action taken" as you do with yours. I just choose not to look at every action as if it was performed by the collective.