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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Riastlin" data-source="post: 5697034" data-attributes="member: 94022">Well, assuming for arguments sake that 62,000 is the actual number of subscribers currently (which is probably not particularly a safe bet), and that everyone subscribed is currently at the $6 a month rate (which almost certainly is not a safe bet), that means a monthly gross intake of $372,000, or just under $4.5 million annually.  I would say, that even if both the number of subscribers and the average subscription price are accurate, then its still likely that DDi is pretty darn profitable. Its certainly true that DDi has cut into the book sales.  I also think that WotC not only realizes this, but plans to embrace it in the future.  It seems fairly clear that they understand digital distribution is the way of the future so I think that more and more you'll see the mainly crunch books simply come out in the form of DDi, such that it won't per se be cutting into other profits (i.e. there aren't print books sitting on shelves). The other thing to keep in mind is that DDi has no doubt been expensive to develop.  In fact, I think its a safe bet that its cost WotC a lot more than intended given that they have basically developed each of the online tools twice.  However, one of the good things about online tools and DDi in general, is that the costs of developing them tend to far outweigh the cost of maintaining them.  It's certainly not free to maintain, but it is relatively cheap.  In fact, when the change to 5ed does come, it will be really cheap to maintain DDi 4ed tools because they wouldn't need much in the way of updates, just general server maintenance. In short, I think that long term, DDi is going to be very profitable for WotC, even if they don't draw much more than 62,000 subscribers.</blockquote>

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