Zardnaar
Legend
I'm fairly confidant they have had this discussion and it might be a plan B if PF2 tanks.
They don't really want to rely on WotC long term they may botch 6E for example or mess up 5E etc.
D&D 2E What PF2E means for D&D5E
- Thread starter Prakriti
- Start date
I'm fairly confidant they have had this discussion and it might be a plan B if PF2 tanks.
They don't really want to rely on WotC long term they may botch 6E for example or mess up 5E etc.
Jester David
Hero
The RPG market grew from $880 million in mid-2015 to $1.2 billion in mid-2016 and $1.4 billion in 2017. In the latter two, RPGs went from $35 million to $45 million RPGs. About 3% both times, so the RPG market was probably $26 million in 2015. So the RPG market increased by $20 million between 2015 and 2016.
What caused the majority of that growth? 5th Edition.
$20,000,000 per year is a lot of 5e D&D books.
Assuming 1/5th of people buy a book (which matches Pareto Principe that 80% of your profits come from 20% of your clients), that would be 1,800,000 books sold.
Why? The game is doing phenomenal well and everyone knows that. What's the benefit of getting into specifics?
The HUGE difference is the hottest thing in our small community (ENWorld, Paizo.com, RPG.net) is not big the the RPG community as a whole. When you look at 4Chan and Reddit, Pathfinder 2 isn't nearly as big of news.
And Pathfinder has a core audience that *really* did not want to change editions. And there's a high sunk cost for PF1. The conversion rate from PF1 to PF2 might be smaller than for some D&D Editions.
That is empirically not true.
The 5e PHB just had it's BEST sales week for the past year. And has seldom dropped out of the top 100 books on Amazon for the past twelve months. It is doing FANTASTIC.
Maybe for a day. Maybe for a week. But likely not lasting longer. And sales on Paizo.com and local game stores will minimise it's Amazon footprint.
Keep in mind that Starfinder *barely* hit the top 100. The highest it reached on Amazon was 89. The highest the D&D PHB reached was... #1. And during the time Starfinder was released, D&D was alternating between 100 and 50. So Starfinder *might* have beat it for a day. Or might not, depending on who was rising and falling at that moment. There's no sudden comparative drop in PHB sales around the time; its spikes seem unrelated.
However, almost immediately, Starfinder dropped from 89 to below 500. Everyone interested bought it immediately and sales dwindled after, and it's been lurking in the low thousands since.
Gang-buster sales from PF2 might be an Amazon sales rank of 50 or even 25. The lower range of which is where the PHB lives while the high end is where it can hit during a sale. If WotC asks Amazon discount the PHB that month, it will negate the advantage PF2 has.
Given Pathfinder 2 will drop in early August at GenCon and 5e won't release a book for another month, I expect a lot of people will but PF2 to see what it's like but not actually play. I expect very robust PDF sales on Paizo's site.
It's tempting.
Really... I think the biggest factor won't be PF2 but if D&D continues to grow and expand. If 5e continues how it's going, then 5e might add more new gamers in 2018-19 than Paizo has in total... Or it could plateau hard as it expands as far as it can and sales start sliding. Eighteen months is a long time.
Plus, it really depends on the response to the playtest and if it appears Paizo is taking feedback seriously. If the game isn't popular or well received, that could be a huge blow.
http://paizo.com/people/JesterDavid
Mistwell
Crusty Old Meatwad
Zardnaar
Legend
Sure it could blow up in their face (and I would not be surprised if it did).
I just think you are getting over enthusiastic with some of your claims. We know roughly how many copies of books were sold in the golden age. Adjusted for inflation its 65-80 million dollars at its height.
Mearls specifically claimed 5E has outsold most editions of D&D and Mistwell asked him specifically if it had outsold 3.0 and 3.5 combined. That was a few months ago so maybe it has hit a million now IDK not disputing it is doing very well. Its beaten everything apart from BECMI and 1E based on what Mearls said.
Long term I do not see mass defections from 5E and even a few % points would be great for Paizo. 3E was verybig atone point and a fixed version of it could be appealing and they are adopting a lot of 5E ideas into it.
Hell if you took the 5E PHB, ripped out the classes and feats and plugged in microfeats and 3.X type classes you would have a fun game yes? Alot of PF2 seems to be heading in that direction.
I doubt we will switch over 100% unless we start getting sick of 5E a bit more in 18 months and Paizo knocks it out of the park. Still not a fan of WAR art there is that as well.
Your link says that low choice is just as bad as a lot of choice.
Mistwell
Crusty Old Meatwad
You think we have a low number of RPG choices out there, when it says the limit in choices before degradation is around 7?
Regardless, I think a PF2 is a good choice. I just disagree with the general statement that more choices is always good. Sometimes, it's not.
Jester David
Hero
I imagine part of that is staffing. The people at Paizo play Pathfinder and don’t know 5e. They would have trouble designing good 5e monsters and classes, and balancing the encounters necassary to update the APs would be tricky.
But, still, they would be relatively low cost as all the art assets and maps would be done. And they could easily rely on freelancers for the updating. It should be easy money.
But Paizo seems to be curiously stubborn in their desire to stand alone. While their previous philosophy was “if you make products people want, they will pay for it”, that they’re ignoring the large number of 5e fans desperate for content (adventures, classes, a campaign setting) says a lot about how burned they felt by WotC and how much they want to do their own thing.
Similar Threads
