Pathfinder 2E Release Day Second Edition Amazon Sales Rank

[Haffrung]

Are you sure, other posters have claimed that their Amazon sales are much larger than their subscription / paizo site sales. I don't know how anyone without inside information would really know, but I don't think it is safe to assume one way or the other.

I don't have any links, but I do recall reading comments by Paizo insiders that their subscriptions account for something like half of their revenue. That was the case when they published Dragon and Dungeon magazines (obviously - all magazines earn the bulk of their money from subscriptions), and it carried through when they started the Pathfinder subscriptions. I also recall reading that core books don't make up all that much of their revenue, that they get more from their adventure paths. This may sound odd, until you consider (and I definitely recall James Jacobs making this comment) that half the people who buy adventure paths aren't actively playing an RPG, but buy them as reading material.

There's a reason so many entertainment providers are going to a subscription model. It's predictable, steady revenue. At $25 a month for the AP subscription alone, a subscriber will spend $300 a year. That's the price of six hardcover books. Nobody buys six hardcover books a year for the same game, on Amazon or anywhere else. Even if Paizo have 5,000 subscribers for the APs, that's $1.5 mil in annual revenue right there. And that doesn't include the subscriptions for campaign setting books, map packs, etc.

Paizo is a different company from WotC, with a different product suite and a different business model. It's a mistake to judge its health by Amazon sales of core books.

 

[BryonD]

But aren't you going pretty far afield now?
First, the topic is not "how is Paizo's health as a company". The topic is "How is PF2 itself doing? With a strong tone of 'compared to how PF1 used to be doing' added on."

Vague comments from over a decade ago and back when the market place was entirely different are not useful.
Amazon itself is a much stronger player than it was back then, so much so that this alone invalidates comments that old. They may or may not still happen to be true, but the old statements provide zero evidence to that.

To me it is clear that PF2 has not made a dent in 5E by any implied or observable metric (sales or overall dominance of "games being played"). I don't know what the 3rd best selling RPG is. But it seems to be way behind PF2. So I'm sure there are many publishers who would kill for PF2s sells. And It may very well be more than good enough for Paizo. I truly have no clue on that. And it doesn't interest me that much either, beyond truly wanting them to thrive (for their strong story based products if not just because II like the company).

But there is no reasonable reason to think that they are going to see a repeat of PF1 at this point. The game is still "new and shiny" right now. It might hold ground, much more likely it will slowly fade. The claims that it will grow after the "4th book" or that people are just "finishing their PF1 games" will not play out.

 

[Haffrung]

To me it is clear that PF2 has not made a dent in 5E by any implied or observable metric (sales or overall dominance of "games being played"). I don't know what the 3rd best selling RPG is. But it seems to be way behind PF2. So I'm sure there are many publishers who would kill for PF2s sells. And It may very well be more than good enough for Paizo. I truly have no clue on that. And it doesn't interest me that much either, beyond truly wanting them to thrive (for their strong story based products if not just because II like the company).

But there is no reasonable reason to think that they are going to see a repeat of PF1 at this point. The game is still "new and shiny" right now. It might hold ground, much more likely it will slowly fade. The claims that it will grow after the "4th book" or that people are just "finishing their PF1 games" will not play out.

I don't disagree with anything you say. I'm not defending Paizo or claiming that PF2 has been a big success. I'm just pointing out that they have a very different business model from WotC and other RPGs companies, a model where it's difficult to learn much from Amazon sales ranks.

 

[BryonD]

I don't disagree with anything you say. I'm not defending Paizo or claiming that PF2 has been a big success. I'm just pointing out that they have a very different business model from WotC and other RPGs companies, a model where it's difficult to learn much from Amazon sales ranks.

Maybe you can't learn much about how Paizo is doing. But it is a perfectly valid bit of data to imply how PF2 is resonating amongst players. And, as a player, I find that topic both much more accessible and interesting.

I find the Paizo financial health thing to be something of a red herring. The impossibility of defining what they expect, desire, and/or need out of PF2 is bad enough, but they are also a really diverse company these days. So it is meaningless.

To me, sticking to how PF2 is embraced or rejected by various segments of the marketplace is much better topic. We can't answer that to three decimal places. But there is a lot that can be observed.

 

[Haffrung]

To me, sticking to how PF2 is embraced or rejected by various segments of the marketplace is much better topic.

Sure. For my part, I don't think PF2 will take off until Paizo delivers a hit adventure path. Because as much as number-crunching character optimizers and systems wonks tend to dominate forums, APs have always been what drove take-up of Pathfinder, not the math behind character progression.

 

[BryonD]

No. I think you are totally wrong there. For better AND for worse, PF1 was 3.5. Their first big poster proclaimed "3.5 Thrives". And at the time there was a ton of discontent with 4E. And the marketplace overall was not burned out on that mechanical system. (The OGLs impact on WotC's market share is a deep rabbit hole of a side conversation)

People played, and didn't play PF1 because of their opinion of the PF1 mechanics. (or perhaps their GM's opinion )

You can easily find lots of conversation about people converting APs exactly because they so liked the APs while also disliking the mechanics. So clearly those people just didn't play PF1.
In recent years the overall age of the system and the power of 5E both crushed PF1. The sales dried up because it stopped being the game of choice. (And, really, if your reasoning was right PF! would still be rocking because the APs are still going).

There are some really cool things about PF2. But they also alienated a lot of people with some of the core choices they made. I believe the number of people buying APs despite not using the base system will go up.

May I ask, are you saying that the first AP is a dud and thus has negatively impacted sales of PF2? I honestly have no opinion because I have so much PF1 content I never even considered the new AP.

 

[Haffrung]

When it comes to RPGs, I don't think system matters as much as the obsessives who post about systems on forums think. I mean, they matter. But not at the granular level that people get in spats over on forums. When D&D Next came out, system wonks shat all over it for being incoherent, old-school, and cludgey. It lacked both the powergaming nobs and dials of 3E and the elegant math of 4E. A huge step back. A milquetoast compromise. Bound to fail. And yet here we are.

There are some really cool things about PF2. But they also alienated a lot of people with some of the core choices they made.

What's 'a lot of people'? Hundreds? The hardcores who spend hours a week arguing on forums don't matter much in the scheme of things. Not for companies that operate on the scale of Paizo and WotC. Paizo is looking to bring in thousands - tens of thousands - of gamers who don't hang out on forums and argue over the magic item economy, or the DPS of wizards vs fights.

PF2 is 90 per cent the same game as PF1, and 80 per cent the same game as D&D 5E. The things edition warriors argue over might move that dial a few degrees closer, but not enough to substantially affect the game's popularity in the wider market, to retain 90 per cent of PF1 players or bring in tens of thousands of 5E players. IMHO, Paizo's core skill is creating adventures, and if PF2 is going to take off, it will be on the back of popular adventure paths. Just my opinion - and that's all we can go on.

 

[BryonD]

I see a lot of fallacies here.
You start throwing around a bunch of ad hominems. "obsessives" "wonks" and of course the dreaded "edition warrior". How about we just try objective assessments?

If PF2 had bumped 5E off the #1 spot would you be here saying that the system was irrelevent to that? I'll suspect that you'll just say "of course", but I'll go out on a limb and doubt it. Quite simply, suggesting that it is not true that people play games they like and don't play games they dislike is an absurdity. And here it seems the kind of squint and tilt your head rationalization that results from being unhappy with the obvious interpretation.

You badly cherry pick your data regarding the reception of 5E. Overall the response was very positive. Yes, there were 4e diehards who were (understandably) disappointed. And yes, there were other who complained. Heck, I have a lot of issues with 5E RAW. But the game was embraced from the get go. The detractors were few and far between if you use 4E and even PF2E as a reference.

Then you say "90% the same" for something that can't actually be quantified. But, hey, lets go with it. Jack and Coke and Strychnine and Coke are 90% the same as well. That 10% can be important. I really LOVE several elements of PF2E. But, to me, the parts that fail, fail badly. You can't just ignore the content of what did change.

You ignored my question about the current AP.
I have a few more questions for you.
If system makes no difference, then why make a new system?
If APs control success, then why did PF1E drop in popularity?
If APs control success, then why should anyone expect PF2E in 2020 to be any more popular than PF1E in 2017?

You said that Paizo's core skill is creating adventures. Would you elaborate on why you said that when the topic is core system design. The implication of your redirection is that you don't want to comment on the system design. Is that true? Or would you be expand on your position and reconcile that disconnect?

The bottom line is: people will play games they like. The success of PF2E will live or die based on what people think of that core over the long run. One third of a year in it does not look like the trend is promising. And if that is the case, then it does not make one an "edition warrior" to say so. I'd really like to see a great replacement for PF1E. If your google-fu is good you can probably find me saying that right after 2E was announced but before we had any details. But actually having and honest dissatisfaction with the system is a completely reasonable position and does not deserve ad hominem attacks.

 

[teitan]

Thinking and facts aren’t always the same. There is a reason comic book companies no longer offer subscription services.

 

[Haffrung]

Paizo's hopes for PF2 lie in converting 5E players. They can't rely on PF1 players alone, because barring the kind of boom we're seeing with D&D today (which is all about Stranger Things, Critical Role, and all things nerdy being normalized, not bounded accuracy or the action economy) the player-base for every RPG gradually withers and dies off.

I suppose they could have just accepted shrinking down to a Green Ronin-sized company, letting most of the staff go, and releasing a handful of books a year. But really, standing still was not an option if they wanted to remain a big player in the hobby. The Pathfinder player-base has been shrinking relentlessly for years, to where I'd presume it's a fraction of the size it was 6 or 7 years ago. Hanging on to 100 per cent of those players is unrealistic, though they probably expect to hold onto at least half of them. The rest of their growth has to come from new players, and the obvious place is 5E players looking for something a little different.

So let's say Paizo expects/hopes the audience for PF2 is 30 per cent returning PF1 players and 70 per cent new players. These people who you say are disappointed with the way Paizo has gone with PF2 are frankly small potatoes at this scale. The difference between a retention rate of 70 per cent PF1 players vs 50 per cent PF1 players isn't going to make or break the success of PF2, not when existing players are expected to make up only a fraction of sales for the new edition.

I'd thought that Paizo might attract 10-15 per cent of the D&D 5E player-base to at least try it out. And given how huge the 5E audience has become, that this would be enough to restore Pathfinder to something close to its peak years in sales.

Now I'm starting to think that PF2 won't attract anything close to 10-15 per cent of the D&D 5E player-base. But I don't think that's because of the mechanical issues people argue over on these forums. I think it's because the growth in 5E has been almost exclusively with casual and more narrative-focused players, many of whom barely even engage with the system at all and play for the social engagement. Hobby boardgames saw the same thing, where the explosive growth in participation in recent years has been overwhelmingly at the casual/low-complexity level.

Which is why I think Paizo need a breakout hit AP to attract veteran 5E players who aren't averse to complexity and are looking for a great campaign to run. Because a system this complex will not appeal to players who don't like to engage intensely with mechanics (the bulk of the 5E player-base), and the existing PF1 player-base is too small to support the game at the scale Paizo operates.

Oh, and to address your AP question: the reason APs haven't sustained the popularity of Pathfinder in recent years is because A) as I said, the PF1 player-base has been attriting away relentlessly because that's just what happens as RPGs age, and B) the recent APs have not been especially good (judging by ratings) or generated a lot of buzz.