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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jim Butler" data-source="post: 1174233" data-attributes="member: 1461">I think what you're seeing is the start of a collapse; not consolidation.You've got a number of small companies that have determined that they can't produce products profitably any more, and they're moving to other companies or forming conglomerations. So, instead of 5 companies releasing 5 products, you've got 1 company releasing 5 products.I've been chatting with a number of distributors asking them about sales across the industry. And while there is some disagreement about whether or not the size of the pie (total industry sales) is growing, there's no doubt from any of them that sales of every single publisher's products have dropped since May of this year. Only WotC has been largely immune to the sales drop (and then only with their new 3.5 releases). Sales of backstock is dead, dead, dead (even from WotC).There are so many new products released that no one can keep track of them any more. Some retailers have taken to ordering fewer and fewer of all products, others have resorted to just special orders of new releases, and others yet have decided to stick with a few select publishers. Big distributors are slashing their initial orders of titles so that they don't get stuck with stock they can't sell.If the sales trends continue, you'll see middle-tier d20 companies fade away; you might even see larger d20 companies stop their RPG publishing operations altogether and focus on card games and other more profitable venues. And in the ultimate doomsday scenario, you'll see the publisher marketplace occupied by a few small companies (that used to be mid-tier or larger companies) and the remainder all one-product companies that release their product into the void and fade away to obscurity (only to be immediately replaced by a new company that does the same thing).I'm not necessarily this pessimistic on the future of our industry, but these are where the indicators are leading me. Competitive pressures at the retailer and distributor levels could cause positive changes in the industry; retailers could make decisions to stick with mid-tier companies and special order all other products; distributors could demand that all first releases sold to them by startups be sold under terms that make returnability viable (and some already do by utilizing Osseum and Impressions); gamers could make the decision to support their favorite companies by buying every product (and making sure other members of their group do the same thing). Lots of things *could* happen to make things better.What would you do to make things better?</blockquote>

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