Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="eyebeams" data-source="post: 3354140" data-attributes="member: 9225">I've heard people praise WotC's market research, but I also know a stats prof who didn't care for their methods.As for "D&D's Best Year Ever," the last time that was announced was before a round of layoffs that hit a friend of mine and the very person who made that statement. Let us say that I was skeptical then and now definitely regard any such claims to be highly *contestable* when it comes to applying it to common sense definitions of things. Then again, that last claim came about when Hasbro suffered an overall downturn, including, IIRC, about an 8% drop in games net revenue in FY2005. By contrast, Hasbro's 4th Q 2006 highlights report strong performance that exceeds projections, but D&D is *not* singled out as a strongly-performing brand.For all intents and purposes, a phrase like "Best Year Ever" is totally meaningless. Brand or product line(s)? Net or gross? Inflation adjusted or not? Counting from which year? How reliable are records of past years?Keep in mind that while D&D is this Cyclopean thing from the POV of RPG manufacturing, in Hasbro's general reportage it is largely treated as an output of WotC's minis and publishing concerns. Then again, this could be because they're afraid of D&D's lingering PR problems and don't want to draw attention to it. But D&D as a thing in of itself doesn't register much, in any event.As for Eberron: WotC is also in the business of creating intellectual property. RPGs are a cheap way to do so with a built-in test market. Salvatore alone has over 3 million sales to his name and Drizz't merchandise alone may well garner more profit than the game that inspired him. It makes sense to experiment with a new setting, see how it flies with D&D fans and then see how it can be exploited beyond the traditional RPG fanbase -- and this is exactly what happened.</blockquote>

Verification