I love the synergy of moving goal posts and sour grapes.
For months now we've been hearing report after report that Paizo is matching or beating WotC. And every time the claim was met with howls that the source was unverifiable therefore their claim was automatically proven false.
Suddenly it might be true, but is all meaningless because this was the plan all along....
I believe based on my experience that DDI is successful, BUT 4E is still going from ok downward in total fanbase, regardless of what media you look at. Yes, the book trade is taken the brunt of it. But that doesn't mean it is simply a one to one transition from paper to electronic. It is nowhere near that.
The change in sales is a composite of both fewer players and some players switching to DDI.
No kidding.
What is even more hilarious is the suggestion that Paizo's off-the-shelf sales dwarf Paizo's own direct to customer sales program.
They don't.
Paizo's ENTIRE business model since the day it was spun off from Wizards of the Coast was premised upon selling directly to its customers to remain profitable. It is a business model that Paizo, to this day, employs to remain profitable and pursue a product release schedule that is several times larger than WotC's entire RPG and accessories line in terms of #SKUs.
The same adventures that WotC insists are not profitable are, in fact, profitable for Paizo. In fact, the Adventure Path line is profitable before a single copy of an AP is sold at retail BECAUSE of Paizo's emphasis on subscriber sales.
Indeed, you can subscribe to entire categories of products that Paizo sells. Thousands and thousands of fans do. It's a regular influx of cash that pays the bills at Paizo and contributes handsomely to their bottom line. Does it antagonize their retailers? Yes, it does. But that does not seem to have hurt them in terms of shelf space in the past 30 months.
In fact, I am dead certain that the average subscriber to Paizo spends AT LEAST three times the amount per month in dollars than a WotC subscriber pays. My guess is that after taking into account the additional product lines that Paizo subscribers also subscribe to, that the true number is four (maybe even five) times the revenue per subscriber, per month.
Does WotC have four to five times the subscribers that Paizo does? They might; and they might not, too.
Do I think that Paizo earns a greater amount of gross revenue by selling its products directly to customers in a given year than WotC does?
It's probably reasonably close, but overall? Yes, I do.
The net revenue on pure digital products is generally higher than a printed product of course. Still, the point ot take away is that 4E is cancelling products while Paizo is adding them. One game is clearly going up in popularity; the other one is going down.
I don't wish harm to WotC's overall success. They are the gateway game and acquisition arm of the hobby. If they suffer, we will all ultimately suffer throughout the hobby; manufacturer and fan alike. But do I wish pure misery and financial doom upon a product line of randomized card packs intended to be used as part of each RPG session?
Yes, I do. It is an idea utterly contemptuous of the core gamer and is worthy of our collective scorn and derision.
