Planescape 3E by WotC

[Pants]

Now Corporations sometimes have weird ideas of exactly what failed means, but to me it means unprofitable. Meaning that it actually LOST money. Planescape was not unprofitable. It may not have been as profitable as Forgotten Realms was. It may not have been a whopping success. But I just can't buy that it "failed".

Well, until someone shows proof either way, there's no way to prove that it was either a smashing success or a bomb of a failure. Honestly, all I know is that Planescape has a very loyal group of fans and the size of that group is... unknown to me.

 

[random user]

Now Corporations sometimes have weird ideas of exactly what failed means, but to me it means unprofitable. Meaning that it actually LOST money. Planescape was not unprofitable. It may not have been as profitable as Forgotten Realms was. It may not have been a whopping success. But I just can't buy that it "failed".

Just because something made a profit doesn't mean it wasn't a failure. You have to take in the opportunity cost when factoring in whether something was a success.

For example, if you have 10 people dedicated as resources, and they can either make product A, which they know (or are reasonably sure, usually because it's a continuation of a current project) that it will net the company US$1M, but instead you put them on product B, which ends up netting +US$500k, you've made a profit on paper, but you have lost 500k compared to what you could have done if you kept them on their original product.

I read an article once, and unfortunately I don't remember the exact numbers but I believe they are correct, where it stated that because Microsoft was so big, they generally only looked at ideas that could generate at least 1 billion dollars. There were several very good projects that could net 100M here or there, but they simply weren't worth Microsoft's time since it would in essence be an accounting error on their balance sheet.

If the numbers weren't 1 billion and 100 million, they were still some other insanely large numbers.

 

[BOZ]

Me too. Perhaps the people at Wizards hadn't though of it either...

One can only hope.

actually, i was kind of hoping for that. or that, even better, perhaps the idea had come up but no one had much taken it seriously. but if we create a nice little buzz about it and someone catches wind of it, who knows what could happen...

 

[reanjr]

Just because something made a profit doesn't mean it wasn't a failure. You have to take in the opportunity cost when factoring in whether something was a success.

For example, if you have 10 people dedicated as resources, and they can either make product A, which they know (or are reasonably sure, usually because it's a continuation of a current project) that it will net the company US$1M, but instead you put them on product B, which ends up netting +US$500k, you've made a profit on paper, but you have lost 500k compared to what you could have done if you kept them on their original product.

I read an article once, and unfortunately I don't remember the exact numbers but I believe they are correct, where it stated that because Microsoft was so big, they generally only looked at ideas that could generate at least 1 billion dollars. There were several very good projects that could net 100M here or there, but they simply weren't worth Microsoft's time since it would in essence be an accounting error on their balance sheet.

If the numbers weren't 1 billion and 100 million, they were still some other insanely large numbers.

Nonetheless, just because it wasn't as much of a success as something else still does not constitute a failure. Being profitable on a product does not ensure that the company is successful as there are many mitigating factors, but it doesn't mean the product wasn't a success. Just that the product needed to be a bigger success to make the company a success.

Using your example, MS has huge overhead and oversight on all of its projects to maintain the brand and for several other reasons. A small product cannot generate the revenue to be proifitable over and above the overhead. That product would be a failure.

On the other hand, XBox currently an economic failure. Microsoft netted 5% loss on it (by last statistics I heard). Microsoft has other goals in mind than gaining profit from XBox (like profits from XBox 2) but I still wouldn't consider XBox a success. (Actually of the 5 groups at MS only 2 are profitable).

Wizards of the Coasts may consider it a failure, for instance, if Planescape had a 5% margin but was drawing half the sales away from the 10% margin Forgotten Realms. Both are profitable. In my opinion, both are successes. It just doesn't make the company successful.

And that's what I was trying to get at. Saying Planescape is a failure implies that TSR did not reach some overarching goal. That's not the case. The case is that TSR didn't have a goal in mind in the first place. They were horribly mismanaged up and down. That doesn't make Planescape a failure.

Of course, I'm just conjecturing. I can't guarentee Planescape was profitable. But I just can't see it as unprofitable. Especially given the number of products put into it. If it wasn't profitable, they would not have supported it.

 

[Pants]

Especially given the number of products put into it. If it wasn't profitable, they would not have supported it.

That doesn't mean anything. As you said, TSR was horribly mismanaged, plus a good deal of the Planescape releases were put on hold because TSR couldn't afford the printing prices.

 

[The_Gunslinger658]

Hi all-

Just a heads up for those wishing to get involved in a Planescape campaign, check out eBay, the prices for planescape stuff is really cheap compared to a few years back. I remember when Planes of Conflict used to go for some really premium bids.


Scott