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Message: <blockquote data-quote="innerdude" data-source="post: 5689020" data-attributes="member: 85870">I'm not sure what the total market cap is on pen-and-paper RPGs, but it's an interesting question. I bet most of us would be shocked at how little the actual, total world-wide sales revenue of RPGs actually is. For example, the PFRPG Core Rulebook sold out its first print run before the product had ever been released back in '09. I've seen several posters on this board with experience in the printing industry stating that at the retail price point of $49.99, that the first print run was probably between 50,000 and 65,000 copies. They're on what, the fourth printing now (though likely in smaller batches than the first)? I'm totally generalizing with the numbers here, so let's say that since August 2009, Paizo has sold roughly 125,000 total PFRPG Core Rulebooks, at a wholesale price to distributors of approximately $20. That's only $2.5 million in sales, before any overhead--printing and materials, labor (salaries), and the like. Just to give an idea of how little that actually is, I work for a mid-level SaaS software company with approximately 700 clients and 70 employees. And we're consistently pulling in $600,000-$650,000 monthly. In other words, between July 1 and October 31 this year, our company likely has had more total sales volume than Paizo netted from the core rulebook since it first hit shelves 25 months ago. Now obviously, Paizo has multiple revenue streams and product lines, but all told, it wouldn't surprise me in the least to hear that Paizo's total company revenue was between 6 and 8 million annually, and I'd be just as unsurprised to hear it was half that. To give a comparison, when our company was doing $4 million in annual sales, we had maybe 40 total employees, including upper division management. Now don't get me wrong, a company doing $4-8 million in annual revenue is nothing to sneeze at, and I'm sure the folks at Paizo love the work. But let's not kid ourselves that in terms of actual revenue, they're anything more than what they are--a big player in an absolutely miniscule market. I'd guess that world-wide, the entire tabletop RPG industry has a market cap well under $100 million annually, and of that, WotC represents at least 60% of it.And once again, in case anyone thinks I'm bagging on Paizo: I am actively GM-ing a Pathfinder game right now, and am a big supporter of the system and company.</blockquote>

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