It's not the only data-point for comparison, though - the ICv2 charts have shown D&D ahead for a year now, while Black Diamond Games have indicated the two are roughly neck-and-neck (though D&D has 9 products and Pathfinder some hundreds). Indeed, Paizo also sell the PHB on their website - it would be very interesting to know how the two games were selling over there!
If you're doing a comparison, it's really hard to argue that D&D isn't outselling Pathfinder, and even harder to suggest that specific D&D products aren't outselling recent Pathfinder releases. And, indeed, if this weren't the case, something would be quite wrong, what with D&D being new and exciting and Pathfinder being in the late-edition part of its cycle.
It's not the only data point, but regardless of what other ones you look at, the biggest one on the Paizo side is not public information, so any comparisons are going to inevitably shortchange Paizo by a fair bit. D&D is probably outselling Pathfinder right now due to the relative age of both, but by how much is something that no one on these boards is going to be able to truly tell. And the fact that D&D is doing it with fewer products also doesn't mean as much as some people think because the business strategies are so different, with the number of individual products being part and parcel of the different strategies.
The biggest part that bugs me about the comparisons is that if you look at what the two brands have right now, both in the tabletop game and beyond, Paizo is actually a lot closer to D&D than many people give them credit for. The tabletop games are close enough in popularity that if all the numbers were publicly available, I suspect it would be a dead heat with variations based on the most recent releases, giving D&D an noticeable edge due to the newness of the system. The organized play, while still technically part of the tabletop game, but not entirely, is an important arena that pushes everything and Paizo has easily caught up in that area. Their one computer game is about as accepted as any of the current D&D computer games. Their novel line, on the whole, seems to be about as successful as the D&D line minus Drizzt and a couple of other heavyweights. Their board games seem to be doing about as well as the ones for D&D. Ditto for their mini's. Pathfinder does not have a cartoon, a string of largely bad movies, or that handful of breakout successes, like Baldur's Gate or Drizzt, that D&D has, but I would say that Paizo has done as well as WotC has overall, even in the "expand beyond the tabletop market" area that WotC seems to be pushing so hard, considering that most of those breakout successes did not come under WotC's control of the brand, Neverwinter Nights being the sole exception. Paizo still lags a fair bit, and will for a while, but WotC also had a head start from the history of the brand that is not nearly as large as it could be at this point if WotC had shown their ability to carry out their preferred business plan, which hasn't changed in terms of primary goals since 3rd edition. Licenses not directly under their immediate control has only been part of their long term difficulties in expanding beyond Drizzt and Baldur's Gate. WotC simply has not shown a capability to fully use what they do control to maximum effect.
The two things that Paizo will never have is the history, which means little if WotC is unable to use it effectively, which has been the case thus far, and the many different worlds that WotC has at their disposal. I can understand the initial focus on Forgotten Realms, and it woudn't bother me nearly as much in doing so they stuck to the many storylines and metaplots already present in the Realms while doing so. Marvel didn't borrow storylines from Guardians of the Galaxy or their lesser known characters in order to establish Iron Man and the Avengers the way that WotC borrowed the Temple of Elemental Evil from Greyhawk in order to bolster Forgotten Realms. Thus Marvel still has the ability to sell those lesser known stories as independent and distinct stories. WotC has diminished their ability to eventually sell Greyhawk as a separate world with separate stories by appropriating one of the larger storylines famiiliar to non-RPG audiences for the Realms. And they have done with the Realms many times already, borrowing gods and whatever else they want from other worlds to bolster the Realms. It would make sense if the Realms started as a bare outline, but the world already has ample storylines of it's own that barely got touched in either 3rd or 4th edition. This borrowing means one of two things, neither of which is particularly good for the future of the Realms or the brand as a whole. First, that they don't intend to use the other worlds directly ever again, because if they wanted to use the other worlds directly again, weakening them by taking their major stories for the Realms is a really stupid idea. Second, the Realms is not as strong of a flagship world as many make it out to be, and the only way to make it work is to borrow from other worlds to fill in the many blanks and weak stories that are still present in the world even after all this development time.
I guess I can't help but feel that if they want to focus on the Realms right now, they need to focus on the Realms, and use all the available stories in the Realms already, rather than using the Realms as a backdrop for all the major stories present in the other worlds. The bleeding over of stories suggests to me that the developers of the game are not entirely convinced that the other worlds will ever see the light of day again and the only way those cool storylines are going to be told is if they are ported over to the Realms. This does not bode well for the brand as a whole because much of the strength of the brand comes from the presence of the diversity of it's published worlds.
I can understand the desire to establish a true flagship world, but if establishing that comes at the cost of diminishing the uniqueness of the other worlds, WotC gains nothing, because if they do reach a point where they can pull out the other worlds, there will be that much less to expand with. In the end, WotC's ability to truly leverage even their largest world at their disposal without stealing from the other worlds concerns me a bit. Even if they do get to the other worlds eventually, just how long is it going to take and how many unique stories are going to remain?
