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Message: <blockquote data-quote="doctorhook" data-source="post: 6343975" data-attributes="member: 58401">(Disclaimer: It's late and I didn't read the whole thread.)Let's talk about WotC and Paizo.It's flatly untrue to say that WotC and Paizo are not competing with  one another. Each might be pursuing different market segments, but  that's just a tactic to grow their businesses without wasting resources  pursuing each others' fans. This situation will change as soon as it  benefits one company to do so. Overall, I think the odds favour WotC making that move first, probably by early 2015 if 5E is well received.At this point, the future landscape of the RPG market depends very much on  how 5E performs. WotC is still only in the earliest stages of 5E's  rollout, but the preliminary reaction is very positive--a lot more  positive than 4E's release was. This is ominous news for Paizo, who have  invested way too much into Pathfinder to ever go back to being just a  third-party publisher for D&D, but it's not necessarily a death  knell.For the foreseeable future, Pathfinder is here to stay. By now it has penetrated the market too far and profited its publisher too much to just dry up in the next couple years, even in the worst possible business scenarios. That said, Pathfinder is still not the dominant brand, despite being the top-selling one, nor does Paizo have access to the same resources as WotC. Worse for Paizo, their own market niche was originally built on negative fan-reaction to the previous new edition of D&D, so there's a real risk that Paizo could accidentally chase away their own customer base if they try to grow or innovate too much, which significantly limits the types of products they'll want to publish. I expect Paizo will focus strongly on keeping its existing fans happy until they have solid data about 5E in a few quarters; they won't commit to any new directions until after they know exactly what effect their biggest threat is having on the market.As for smaller RPG publishers, most don't have nearly as much to lose as Paizo does if WotC regains the top spot in the market with 5E. Most of those publishers will continue publishing their own niche product lines, and some will probably even generate new business with licensed content for 5E (GF9, Kobold Press, and Trapdoor Studios for example). At the end of the day, even if 5E turns out to be the edition to end all editions, people are going to keep playing their favorite games; dedicated PF fans will still play PF, dedicated C&C fans will still play C&C, and dedicated OSR fans will continue with OSR.</blockquote>

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