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<blockquote data-quote="Mercurius" data-source="post: 5437106" data-attributes="member: 59082">First of all, remember that 45,000 is the bare minimum number of DDI&nbsp; subscriptions - some on this site have guessed that it could be as&nbsp; many as 200,000 or even more (although that seems a little high to me). Let's&nbsp; say, as a middle ground and for the sake of discussion, that there are approximately 100,000 DDI&nbsp; subscriptions. We also must remember that while the Player's Handbook might sell hundreds of thousands&nbsp; of copies, sales decrease after the first few months and then dwindle&nbsp; away over the years. What follows is the well known diminishing returns that fuels the edition cycle. The idea behind DDI is that subscriptions stay steady, month to&nbsp; month, and should theoretically gradually increase as more and more buy&nbsp; into it. In other words, no diminishing returns, and potentially less of a need to go through the endless edition cycle. As with the 2-3 hardcovers that WotC used to publish each month, DDI provides a regular, monthly revenue stream. Yet unlike the hardcovers, the regular cost is much less and, theoretically at least, the regular revenue stream is not only more reliable but larger. Furthermore, I may be wrong but I would imagine that the cost of producing 2-3 hardcover books a month is likely much more than maintaining DDI, so the profit margin--at least as a percentage--should be higher.Now the key to DDI working is that they not only have to keep their customers but they should be able to increase them; this, again, is different than the diminishing returns of the later years of the edition cycle. Now the problem is that this growth is dependent upon providing a quality product that people want. This is where WotC is really dropping the ball. Thus your &quot;gap&quot; - it is only there to the degree that WotC doesn't provide a quality product that people want to keep on subscribing to, and new people want to get into. It could be much more successful than it has been, but for various reasons WotC hasn't capitalized on what should be their golden egg.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Mercurius, post: 5437106, member: 59082"] First of all, remember that 45,000 is the bare minimum number of DDI subscriptions - some on this site have guessed that it could be as many as 200,000 or even more (although that seems a little high to me). Let's say, as a middle ground and for the sake of discussion, that there are approximately 100,000 DDI subscriptions. We also must remember that while the [I]Player's Handbook[/I] might sell hundreds of thousands of copies, sales decrease after the first few months and then dwindle away over the years. What follows is the well known diminishing returns that fuels the edition cycle. The idea behind DDI is that subscriptions stay steady, month to month, and should theoretically gradually increase as more and more buy into it. In other words, no diminishing returns, and potentially less of a need to go through the endless edition cycle. As with the 2-3 hardcovers that WotC used to publish each month, DDI provides a regular, monthly revenue stream. Yet unlike the hardcovers, the regular cost is much less and, theoretically at least, the regular revenue stream is not only more reliable but larger. Furthermore, I may be wrong but I would imagine that the cost of producing 2-3 hardcover books a month is likely much more than maintaining DDI, so the profit margin--at least as a percentage--should be higher. Now the key to DDI working is that they not only have to keep their customers but they should be able to increase them; this, again, is different than the diminishing returns of the later years of the edition cycle. Now the problem is that this growth is dependent upon providing a quality product that people want. This is where WotC is really dropping the ball. Thus your "gap" - it is only there to the degree that WotC doesn't provide a quality product that people want to keep on subscribing to, and new people want to get into. It [I]could [/I]be much more successful than it has been, but for various reasons WotC hasn't capitalized on what should be their golden egg. [/QUOTE]

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