Many of these symptoms were actually there by 3.5. Basically, WotC avoided the so-called "supplement treadmill" for perhaps 3 years (and given how line management works this was probably contemplated as early as 2002). The company dropped brown softcovers pretty damned quick and eventually took over the niches they'd left to third party publishers.
I remember hilarious complaints from WotC staff that publishers weren't using the OGL properly. Good companies apparently should have just done D&D adventures and settings that were PHB-centric, and were Bad for wanting to nurture independent identities. That tells you how well management thought the OGL was helping D&D sales.
DDI follows the pattern of promising more than the company can deliver on the electronic front, but we're talking about a project that was struck by some disasters (such as a murder-suicide) that can't be blamed on a poor strategy. Estimates based purely on salary aren't going to work because the IT infrastructure costs money too.
The truth is probably that the ideal of an evergreen set of core rules is foolish to pursue and fails to deal with the hobby games market's nature, and this was true even when 3e was launched -- it was just disguised by the fact that an overhaul of D&D was long overdue. Yes, greying geeks like the idea of an edition that will last forever, but a winning business model is more like to resemble WH40K's, with a regular cycle of iterative updates (which is better for us greying types since we can kludge things when the rules are very similar). Perhaps Essentials reflects this awareness, though it is a confusing execution.
So I would say that yes, sales are declining. I would also say that this was probably par for the course for 3e, too, because "reprint the PHB forever" was a failed plan in all incarnations.
I remember hilarious complaints from WotC staff that publishers weren't using the OGL properly. Good companies apparently should have just done D&D adventures and settings that were PHB-centric, and were Bad for wanting to nurture independent identities. That tells you how well management thought the OGL was helping D&D sales.
DDI follows the pattern of promising more than the company can deliver on the electronic front, but we're talking about a project that was struck by some disasters (such as a murder-suicide) that can't be blamed on a poor strategy. Estimates based purely on salary aren't going to work because the IT infrastructure costs money too.
The truth is probably that the ideal of an evergreen set of core rules is foolish to pursue and fails to deal with the hobby games market's nature, and this was true even when 3e was launched -- it was just disguised by the fact that an overhaul of D&D was long overdue. Yes, greying geeks like the idea of an edition that will last forever, but a winning business model is more like to resemble WH40K's, with a regular cycle of iterative updates (which is better for us greying types since we can kludge things when the rules are very similar). Perhaps Essentials reflects this awareness, though it is a confusing execution.
So I would say that yes, sales are declining. I would also say that this was probably par for the course for 3e, too, because "reprint the PHB forever" was a failed plan in all incarnations.
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