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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6664301" data-attributes="member: 996">Actually, it was Pokemon, at the time.  D&D wasn't remotely on the radar. Pathfinder?  Probably not.  First of all, D&D wasn't a huge amount of revenue to begin with, the goal was to make it huge, and the absence of Pathfinder wouldn't have helped with that.  Secondly, the virulent hyperbole of the edition war aside, there was every indication that folks bought (and even played) both D&D and Pathfinder, anyway. On the contrary, it was a very clear and dramatic failure, and informs the way 5e needed to be handled.  The growth potential just isn't there for TTRPGs, trying to marry a TTRPG to on-line tools to create an income stream didn't work, and that's an important lesson,  one that WotC learned, painfully.  Cutting cost and shifting to a sustaining mode was the only thing that made sense. That's what this forum is about, sure, but it's not what anyone at Hasbro particularly cares about.  The TTRPG hobby, as a market, just isn't that big and has no growth prospects. It's hidebound, and attempts to re-invigorate it failed.  So, WotC is openly looking for opportunities outside of it.  It's only sensible.    The story from an insider was that 4e was pitched as a way of gaining huge revenue relative to what TTRPGs had done in the past, mainly by selling a subscription service, and MMO-style revenue stream.  WotC failed to get the on-line support out in the manner it was originally envisioned and it failed, dramatically.  As far as performance just within the TTRPG marketplace, there's very little hard data, but what there is showed D&D beating Pathfinder in every quarter but the one in which Essentials was released, and the ones in which no D&D product was released.  Now that D&D is back on the market, a year has gone by and D&D remains solidly back in the #1 position.All D&D has to do to beat Pathfinder is put a product on the shelves that doesn't completely baffle folks with it's pointlessness.  And 5e has done that, and D&D is back to beating Pathfinder.  Since Pathfinder, even at launch, couldn't beat D&D, even over a year in, it was obviously a lot less than 50%.   Which is why D&D has only 2 developers and such a slow release schedule.  The revenue potential of TTRPGs doesn't warrant any greater investment in that.  Especially when D&D can win what market there is just by showing up. Last I heard, they were happy that M:tG was pulling down a lot of revenue (~100 mil, IIRC).  And, yes that D&D was making the best sellers lists - even if the actual income from it was miniscule, it sounds nice to have winner, however low-stakes the race.   Not too large a portion, no.  But, really, it's the tiny size of the pie, rather than the relative size of the piece that makes it a minor consideration. Nod. And what happened after Hasbro acquired WotC?  3.5 and rapid bloat to flog some more revenue out of the line.  when that didn't work well enough, a big investment in 4e & DDI that failed to hit unprecedented revenue goals.  Followed by much more modest attempts to merely stabilize the line:  Essentials, Next, now a 5e with a very small staff and very slow pace of releases.  And the 20-million-on-a-good-year TTRPG market doesn't even make it on the executive's dashboard.  D&D is something they're keeping on the shelf in case an opportunity presents itself.  5e is that shelf-warmer.  Honestly, I think it's doing quite well, in spite of the low level of investment.  3.5 did do fairly well with the help of the OGL encouraging the production of 3pp complementary products.  5e could do with some 3pp adventures, for instance - or really, anything, since the pace of official material is so slow.  The existing OGL has already been used to create carefully-unofficial 5e-compatible products.  I expect either status-quo - no 5e-specific OGL, no C&Ding 5e-compatible 1.0 OGL products - or some sort of 5e OGL, or 5e GSL for use with the existing OGL, that encourages creating adventures, settings, and other complementary products. Really, the existing OGL will let the hobby continue indefinitely, however small it dwindles, even if Hasbro retires the product line, entirely.  So no worries on that account.  I do hope D&D hangs on, though.  It certainly doesn't take much to keep 3 core books in print and 2 developers employed....</blockquote>

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