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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6279740" data-attributes="member: 4937">And here is an example of why analogies break down.D&D isn't sold in grocery stores.  In a world of Wal-Mart Supercenters and similarly huge supermarkets, it makes perfect sense for not just Ragu and Prego to make a line of 6-10 sauces, but that there be several grades of increasingly complex higher end sauces marketed at higher price points along side them.   After all, there is huge throughput, plenty of shelf space, and a large market for jars of sauce.  Some people like Ragu Traditional (which I can't stand).  Others might prefer Five Brothers Roasted Garlic and Valdelia Onion.  To Wal-Mart, it's not a huge cost to stock 12 brands with 6 different products each.D&D is typically sold as either a small section of a generic bookstore - Barnes & Nobles - are at smaller low profit single owner specialty stores.   In neither case is the retailer benefited from a diversity of competing product lines.   WotC has to adopt a strategy that is good not just for its customers, but supports its distributers.   Whether or not we've reached a point where it can cut out it its traditional brick and mortar distributers without hurting the hobby isn't clear, but my guess would be "No.  No it can't."   So as a result, the brand managers of D&D have no good choices.I don't know what WotC should do because I think it is out of options, but I'll tell you what I think it will do which is the same thing I said it would do 2 years ago now.  Hasbro is going to shop the brand in part or in whole to see if it can find a buyer for it.   If it can't find a buyer at the price point it wants, it is going to shutter the brand or at least the PnP line.  The reason I think that is that honestly, it's what I would do as the CEO.   It makes no sense to keep the brand going in the present circumstances and too much damage has been done to the brand to recover.  There is no path I can see from A => B anymore, at least not through the traditional PnP route.  The only likely buyer of the brand at this point is Paizo, but if I was Paizo I'm not sure I'd want to buy the brand unless someone just shoved it on me and said take it.  Paizo's on Pathfinder brand is increasingly valuable in and of itself.  It doesn't need its historical parent anymore.Honestly, the only way to reform the brand might be to move almost entirely in to some other product line - something like Skylanders although obviously not Skylanders but something equally innovative - that would create interest in the brand and renew it for a new set of customers.  The problem with that is that there is no market for the brand to make that sort of move due to the severe damage that the brand took during the '80's occult scare.  D&D as a brand has negative value in the kids market.  D&D lost most chance to appeal to a larger audience outside of geekdom decades ago, and it doesn't help that D&D has (as a consequence) become synonymous with neck bearded basement dwellers in most people's minds.  In short, D&D is dead, 5e is either vaporware or a rasping death rattle, and this is more interesting as a discussion of how to mismanage a brand than anything else.</blockquote>

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