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Message: <blockquote data-quote="sunshadow21" data-source="post: 6305577" data-attributes="member: 6667193">Sustainability will be the real question though. Anyone who doesn't expect them to sell well initially is kidding themselves, but long term sales will depend in part on those that do see Fate or Dungeon World as legitimate campaign alternatives, especially as a second or third campaigns when they want a break from their main campaign for a bit. For those who know they want to play this next edition as their primary campaign, price is not and would never have been an issue; WotC's problem is that they lost a lot of these people a long time ago, a process that started in the late 3.5 era, sped up early on in 4E's cycle, and has surely accelerated in the last few years of not having any new product out there. At this point, a lot of people may be willing to consider it as an option to play alongside other games, but are not going to be all that eager to play it and just it, and this is where that high of a price point could come back to haunt them. For this crowd, $150 for a complete game, or even the discounts Amazon can sell them for, is going to be enough to raise the question of whether or not the brand name is itself worth the cost; from what I've seen, the content, while very solid, is not going so fantastic or unique that it's going to convince that many people who have already turned to other games to do more than buy the PHB out of curiosity and suddenly drop whatever they switched to and invest in the full system. Using Gen Con passes as an argument is weak because the people who buy those tend to be the core audience that WotC had from day 1 anyway. Their challenge is that outside of those willing to drop the money to go to conventions like that, their core audience is not what it used to be, and their lack of active support for 4E in the last several years has only sped up the exodus to other games. They still have a solid brand, but I think the assumption that people will flock back to it because it's D&D is going to turn out badly for them; an initial spike and than a 4E like fall off is far more likely. Outside of the remaining core group, it's going to be hard to convince people to drop everything else and return to the D&D fold on a full time basis, and putting that high of a price on not just the core books, but the adventures, and presumably, later products as well, is going to limit those that are willing to pick it up as a part time campaign. The price by itself will not be a killer, but unless it's coupled with a system that has every aspect completely blow it's competition out of the water, something highly unlikely, it's not going to help win back lost supporters and restrengthen the brand, and that is where WotC is going to run into trouble, not the people that plan out trips to Gen Con a year in advance.</blockquote>

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