So...How are Sales of 4E Product?

[vagabundo]

First, all I will say regarding promises made before 4e fully came out, is that ze game did not remain ze same

Ignoring the issues of sales and all that nonesense, instead I'll touch on this idea of "sales = quality." Good lord, this is a frightening idea - scratch that, terrifying idea - in a world where Twilight sells well and the Wayans Brothers are still able to make movies.

Initial sales may not indicate quality, but sustained sales usually do.

As an aside, I participate in another forum (NEOGAF), all about Video Gaming, and their reactions to the Wii and DS are eerily similar to some of the reactions to 4e here, although EnWorld is far more restrained.

You post above sparked a resonance cascade in my brain.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

You know, the trick is - there are different types of qualities. To go in the generic food analogy thing: Fast Food for example has the quality of being fast and easy to get. It might not be as healthy or as refined as other options, but if you want your food fast, you go to Burger King or McDonalds.
A fish restaurant might make the best fish in the world, but if you want a noodle salad, it's not getting a sale from you.

So yes, "sales = quality", for the type of quality people want. (Notice: Type does not mean "degree" or "level")

D&D always had the quality and the qualities a lot of people wanted. If it ceases to do so, the value of the D&D brand will diminish, and it won't sell as good as it used to. If AD&D, D&D 3E or D&D 4E would have been bad games, D&D would no longer bring in the same amount of customers and cease being a guarantee for good sales.

Initial sales may not indicate quality, but sustained sales usually do.

As an aside, I participate in another forum (NEOGAF), all about Video Gaming, and their reactions to the Wii and DS are eerily similar to some of the reactions to 4e here, although EnWorld is far more restrained.

You post above sparked a resonance cascade in my brain.

I want to stress that I'm not saying 4e is low quality, or comparing them to those horrifying examples I gave . I'm simply stating that sales != quality. I mean, Disaster Movie is an hour and change of someone taking a dump, and it still did well in the box offices.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I want to stress that I'm not saying 4e is low quality, or comparing them to those horrifying examples I gave . I'm simply stating that sales != quality. I mean, Disaster Movie is an hour and change of someone taking a dump, and it still did well in the box offices.

And I am saying that sales imply a certain type of quality. I don't know why Disaster Movie did well in the box offices specifically, but apparently it gave viewers something they wanted to see.

Of course, movies and role-playing books are hard to compare. Movies provide short-time experiences, while the experience from RPGs lasts a lot longer - and this also affects sales, because people that like an RPG for a longer time will suggest it to others.

I think that this point the really interesting sales to know (especially in the case of "customer retention") would be that of the Martial Power book or the Adventurers Vault and comparing it to their 3E and 3.5 equivalents. I suppose that's even harder then figuring out the Core Book Sales.

 

[vagabundo]

I want to stress that I'm not saying 4e is low quality, or comparing them to those horrifying examples I gave . I'm simply stating that sales != quality. I mean, Disaster Movie is an hour and change of someone taking a dump, and it still did well in the box offices.

The reasons for good sales can be complex and good marketing can make a bad product sell for a while, but I believe sustained sales are a metric of market demand which can be certainly related to the quality of the product e.g. the Wii is selling like gangbusters and has sold more than any other console for the same launch period, even the PS2 and the reasons for it are very complex. The DS is also interesting as it wasn't doing that well until the revamp 'lite' came out, then it took off.

Movies are a bit of a oddity as they are so short lived, they are very like traditional games and there is definably a fine art to marketing a movie.

Things like brand, marketing, fashion, synergy can all help a bad quality product sell; but bad products don't generally continue to sell. However the reverse is certainly not true.

 

[Wombat]

From what I've seen -- it is difficult to tell about sale simply because sales for all rpgs are down deeply around the San Francisco Bay Area.

So 4e isn't doing that well, but neither are any other tabletop games.

 

[Fifth Element]

I want to stress that I'm not saying 4e is low quality, or comparing them to those horrifying examples I gave . I'm simply stating that sales != quality. I mean, Disaster Movie is an hour and change of someone taking a dump, and it still did well in the box offices.

But you seem to be saying there is only one definition of "quality" for any type of product.

I infer from your post that you think Disaster Movie is a bad movie, and you would call it low-quality (I haven't seen it, so I couldn't say). But as you say, it did well at the box office. So there's probably a significant number of people who value getting cheap laughs or whatever for their $10, and who therefore consider the movie high-quality in that respect.

So your error is essentially this: You are defining "high quality" to mean "things that I like, regardless of whether others do", and you're defining "low quality" to mean "things that I don't like but others do". Silly others, liking low-quality things.

As Mustrum_Ridcully said, high sales imply some type of quality. There's something there that people wanted.

 

[Delta]

It was not to prove a point. It was merely in the interest of the debate, as someone brought up GG, and I remembered this quote.

That doesn't quite jibe with the way you quoted me above. But at any rate, you can see how we're all coming up empty with the supposed "breaking all sorts of records" citations.

 

[Jack99]

That doesn't quite jibe with the way you quoted me above. But at any rate, you can see how we're all coming up empty with the supposed "breaking all sorts of records" citations.

I wasn't aware we were looking for that. I got sucked into this mess because I find the hypocrisy of some funny.

Regarding the quote to which I responded, it was merely your last mentioning the video, and thus Goodman Games.

However, I think that the real problem, is somewhere along the way, someone twisted this from "4e is a success = breaking all sorts of records".

Now, we have no way to compare to 1e and 2e (this has been confirmed), so what we can do is compare to 3.0 and 3.5.

As I mentioned way back, we know that 4e's first print was 50% bigger than 3.5's first print run, who again was bigger than 3.0's first print run. We know that it was sold out quicker than both, and also thus went into a second and third print faster than the two precedent editions. I guess you could argue that it is a record.

We also know, if I am not entirely wrong (maybe Scott can confirm this, if he still bothers with this dead horse), that 4e gift set got to a higher spot on the NYT best-seller list than the 3.0 (or was it 3.5?) PHB. That also could be argued to constitute as breaking a record.

Do we know if 4e is the best selling edition of all times? No. Do we know if 4e even sold better than the two previous editions? No we do not.

However, and this might be worth talking about. Maybe WotC never expected it to make a clean sweep in the gaming world. The gaming world is very different from just 8 years ago, with the OGL, the abundance of popular d20 variants, etc out there. There is so much more competition of quality today than 8 years ago. Maybe WotC did not expect to get 95% of the old gamers, since they knew, that for the first time in history, they would have to compete against themselves, or rather against the last edition.

Anyway, I think I have said my last piece on this subject. We will never really know. I suspect that even if 4e sales numbers were leaked, those who dislike 4e would still argue that 4e isn't a success, and that the numbers were probably fabricated. And if you think that wouldn't happen, why not believe the boss of D&D when he says that 4e has shattered WotC's projections? I mean, wouldn't that be the definition of a success for a company?

 

[darjr]

That doesn't quite jibe with the way you quoted me above. But at any rate, you can see how we're all coming up empty with the supposed "breaking all sorts of records" citations.

One poster saying that was maybe "Ryan". And he clarified that he wasn't saying that. And that his guess was just a wag.

There was a strange rant about 2e outselling 1e which I think almost everyone agrees was incorrect. And his position, I think, was that the sales meant nothing because of this.

As far as I can tell the thread was not about 4e 'breaking all sorts of records' It's about how well 4e is selling. It is apparently selling really well. The gift set is the 25th most sold book on Amazon for 2008 through October.

 

[Delta]

However, I think that the real problem, is somewhere along the way, someone twisted this from "4e is a success = breaking all sorts of records".

Maybe you missed the point that I've been very carefully quoting you, from post #31 earlier in this thread:

Yet when Mearls, Rouse and Slavichek all post about how 4e is breaking all sorts of records, selling extremely well, all the nay-sayers keep questioning these statements, claiming there are no hard facts.

As I said in my first post to this thread -- I'm skeptical. Or are you now willing to disavow the claim that "Mearls, Rouse and Slavichek all post about how 4e is breaking all sorts of records"?