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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 5448557" data-attributes="member: 7006">The only problem with this idea is that it meant WotC would be delving into the minutia/niche parts of the hobby that would probably not generate the sales numbers necessary to justify the expense of putting man-hours to it.  The whole point of the OGL was so other companies could produce things like a book of ship-to-ship combat, or modules for a pirate campaign etc.The problem WotC had with 3E, 3.5 (and now 4E) is that the products which sell at the numbers they need to justify the expense of producing them... is the baseline books.  The first wave of PH, DMG, MM, and splatbooks for the classes in PH.As soon as those are done, they are now on the downward slope towards running out of money-making material.  Now WotC actually made a good decision in holding back the gnome, halforc, druid, barbarian, bard, and sorcerer... in that it actually extended their baseline products into the second series of books.  So they got a second wave of fairly good sales.  But once those three books PHII, DMG2, MMII were on the shelf... they again have run up against the wall.PH3 and MM3 have run into diminishing returns.  They've tried to replicate the sales boost of 3.5 without the stigma of 3.5 by releasing Essentials... but they've found that because those are basically glorified 'splatbooks' for the existing 4E player, they are not necessary purchases (not nearly to the same extent 3.5 was).So what is left for them?  There are no books remaining in 4E that would create the same sales numbers that they got two years ago... the same way there were no 3.5 books for them to release when they made the decision to create 4E.  Because despite claims to contrary... I do not personally believe that 'adventure paths' or niche books do that for them.  If they did... we'd have another three or four Hammerfast/Von Rukoth books on the schedule, we wouldn't have seen the Player's Options: Dragonborn and Tiefling books end after just those two, and a couple more hardcover adventure books like Revenge of the Giants and Tomb of Horrors would be scheduled.Instead... what is really left for WotC?  It's DDI.  A monthly revenue stream that generates for them for the year the equivalent sales of two hardcover books for every person who subscribes to it.  And what's most important is that they're getting this money from the people who they probably wouldn't get the equivalent money from had they just released a bunch of hardcover books.  I subscribe to DDI... but I didn't buy PH3, nor will I buy Heroes of Shadow when that gets released.  Monster Manual 3?  Didn't buy it.  Any of the Essentials?  Didn't buy it.  Champions of Sword and Spell?  Wouldn't have bought it had it been released.  Heck, even the products they still DO have on their schedule for the year I still don't intend to buy... because I am quite happy playing D&D using the dozen products I bought in the first two years of the game's lifecycle.However, I will still continue to subscribe to DDI... because the tools I get from it are just so damn useful.  So that's $70 they'll get from me that they otherwise would not.  And the fact that they are following this tack of release gives a pretty good indication that there are probably many more people like me... than there are of people who would have bought at least three of the hardcover books they would have released this year had they not changed their publication decisions.  A few of you probably are diehards who intended to buy every book... but I don't think there are enough of you to sustain the sales that WotC needs.Print is not 'dead' per se... but I do think we are approaching the point where print is now 'niche'.</blockquote>

Verification