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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Thor" data-source="post: 5397319" data-attributes="member: 74284">This is pure speculation on my part, but I think you have it backward.I think we're seeing the new Essentials approach because the market was not bearing up the old model any longer. That's not to suggest 4E is not doing well (I don't know one way or the other), but rather that it's getting to the point where the audience is more or less stabilizing rather than growing at a rapid clip.I suspect the vast majority of D&D players out there play one character at a time and only buy what they think they'll need to play that character. They don't need an endless stream of new classes. And the various Power books likely only sell to a fraction of the base audience because only people who play a character of that power source (and completionists) will buy them.If each release only addresses a fraction of the audience, then your production costs remain level (or even rise because you lose out on volume printing discounts)--you still have to dedicate employees to producing quality content. But your revenues are declining because only a fraction of your audience is interested.The old model also creates another problem. Here's a new customer who comes across the game on the shelf of his local Barnes & Noble. Does he buy Player's Handbook 1? Player's Handbook 2? 3? Does he need them all? What if the store only has Player's Handbook 3? Can he start with that? What about DMG 1 and 2 and Monster Manuals 1, 2, and 3? It's confusing and probably not worth his time to figure it out. For the existing fan, or someone who's been around RPGs, it's not a big deal. But for a new customer thinking of taking the plunge, it can be a huge barrier to entry. That's not such a big problem when you're using game stores as your primary point of sale--we can presume the staff there have enough knowledge to explain it. But it's a big problem if you're looking to expand into big box stores like Target and Wal-Mart.For the latter problem, there's Essentials. It's intended to help educate stores on what to stock and to make it easier for the new consumer to determine what to buy. Whether it actually succeeds at that is another story. I know a lot of people take issue with the names of the two player books. But whether that's a legitimate issue or an Internet tempest-in-a-tea-pot remains to be seen.I suspect that a book like Heroes of Shadow is supposed to address the first problem. Instead of introducing yet another slew of classes and yet another power source to support, it's going to present options for existing classes, making it more broadly applicable to the characters of players in the existing base. Again, whether it succeeds at that remains to be seen.</blockquote>

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