Pathfinder 2E Release Day Second Edition Amazon Sales Rank

[Mistwell]

The pocket edition also just released at half the price of the Hardcover. I think rather than look at Amazon’s sales we should be looking at the increase in users running games on Virtual Tabletops. Nothing will approach D&D any time soon so that’s also an unfair comparison with the explosion of D&D due to streaming so how is it compared to other games?

The pocket edition comes out tomorrow on Amazon and none of them ranked on pre-release sales above anything I listed for either company.

Also, it's fair to simply compare it to itself. That's why we've been posting for years in this thread, so we can track how it's doing against itself.

 

[dave2008]

The pocket edition also just released at half the price of the Hardcover. I think rather than look at Amazon’s sales we should be looking at the increase in users running games on Virtual Tabletops. Nothing will approach D&D any time soon so that’s also an unfair comparison with the explosion of D&D due to streaming so how is it compared to other games?

I the comparison across this thread is less the sales difference on Amazon between 5e and PF2e, but the difference on sales over time with respect to each game. 5e has maintained is position for almost 7 years, while PF2e has dropped over 2 years with a small bump when the GMG was released. That is my concern, not the fact that it sells less than 5e. It never needed to sell with 5e, but it would be great if it maintained its sales.*

*With the clarification that we don't really know what the Amazon rankings mean for actual sales.

 

[Parmandur]

Even though I play 5e and not PF2 I really would have loved for PF2 to be much closer to 5e. Could have been interesting. Oh well.

Honest to God, at the start of this I thought it would be more of a horse race.

 

[Parmandur]

The pocket edition also just released at half the price of the Hardcover. I think rather than look at Amazon’s sales we should be looking at the increase in users running games on Virtual Tabletops. Nothing will approach D&D any time soon so that’s also an unfair comparison with the explosion of D&D due to streaming so how is it compared to other games?

Honestly, the VTT numbers are less promising than the Amazon numbers.

There is also Kickstarter: I read an article recently running down 2020 for tabletop Kickstarters, and notably in 2020 Pathfinder compatible products have disappeared entirely: all 5E or another option, not even "we'll also do a Pathfinder version."

 

[Justice and Rule]

Honest to God, at the start of this I thought it would be more of a horse race.

It might be if the market were the same size it was before 5E hit. But 5E basically hit with the right amount of modern design, nostalgia, and pop culture mindshare that it basically created a massive expansion in the market all on its own.

Honestly, the VTT numbers are less promising than the Amazon numbers.

Roll20's numbers are slowly climbing, but worth noting that a lot of Pathfinder people don't use it because it's just not great for the system. Seems like many use Foundry, which is where I found out about the VTT in the first place.

 

[teitan]

The pocket edition comes out tomorrow on Amazon and none of them ranked on pre-release sales above anything I listed for either company.

Also, it's fair to simply compare it to itself. That's why we've been posting for years in this thread, so we can track how it's doing against itself.

funny, we got ours from Amazon last week.

 

[Mistwell]

funny, we got ours from Amazon last week.

I'm just telling you what amazon says right now about publication date. If there is a prior batch, it's no longer listed. Or maybe the delivered early on the pre-release, which has happened before.

It's "officially" out today, and ranked #47,156 in all books right now. I might have missed it earlier because I was only posting the top listings for each game.

LINK

I like the pocket editions by the way. I wish other RPGs would do them more often.

I didn't mention earlier the rest of the line either. So for completeness sake:

Lost Omens, Ancestry Guide (P2): #34,684 in all books
Lost Omens, Gods & Magic (P2): #53,927 in all books
Player Character Pawn Collection (P2): #58,166 in all books
Lost Omens World Guide (P2): #67,037 in all books
Lost Omens Legends (P2): #73,048 in all books
Lost Omens Character Guide (P2): #91,645 in all books
Adventure: Troubles in Otari (P2): #112,217 in all books
Extinction Curse Pawn Collection (P2): #115,505 in all books

As usual I am excluding some accessories like miniatures, dice, GM Screens, etc..

 

[fearsomepirate]

Honest to God, at the start of this I thought it would be more of a horse race.

I knew it was going to be a massacre, predicted it way back when.

In a typical market, the market king only permanently loses its spot when it angers & alienates customers by abandoning its brand identity long enough for somebody else to take the crown.
Generally speaking, and this goes 10x more for entertainment, so the brand that establishes the market defines it and wins by default. We say "fantasy tabletop RPGs," but really, a more accurate description of how the market is perceived by potential customers is "D&D and its clones." Essentially, any given "fantasy RPG" is building its success off D&D's brand identity. With 5e, D&D returned sufficiently close to its established brand identity and produced a sufficiently high-quality product to firmly reestablish its position as market king. It didn't matter how good PF2 was, even if they produced some abstractly perfect set of rules, the market is built on D&D's brand identity, and 5e's good enough that there isn't really an opening for somebody else to appropriate it.

If you want to make money on par with D&D, or better, then you need to introduce a hobby game that is sufficiently unlike D&D to generate its own identity. Two examples of this are MtG and WH40K. You could probably succeed with an RPG by tapping into the zeitgeist at the right moment...VtM did well back in the day, but of course, White Wolf mismanaged its product, so edgy goth vampire stuff didn't really survive the 90s.

I personally think the popularity of the MCU and, a bit before that, the Hunger Games and the Walking Dead created openings the way Tolkien did in the 70s, but nobody really took advantage of it.

 

[Hex08]

Though it is getting closer and closer.

Interestingly, PF1 is declining faster than PF2 is climbing. I wonder were those extra PF1 players are going?

My gaming group still plays PF1 but one of my players has stepped up to take over being GM. He is using my books so he doesn't need to buy anything. I started running PF1 during beta and its was our primary game until about the time PF2 was announced. I was getting burned out on it anyway and was already thinking about moving on. Primarily I run Savage Worlds now, tried Castles & Crusades (which I loved but one of players seemed to have difficulty adapting to) and am thinking about trying Blades in the Dark.

 

[fearsomepirate]

Roll20's quarterly reports also tell you who's playing what online. I suspect this is a reasonably good proxy for the industry, but I'm no expert, so don't cite me in MLA format. Anyway, PF2 as of Q3 was under 2% of games on Roll20. PF total was hanging around a bit under 6%. 5e is over half.

The Orr Group Industry Report Q3 2020 - Breakout Hits and Steady Classics · Roll20 Blog

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