Tim's completely right that if WotC had published the same product with the exact same content it would've suffered horribly due to the sentiment that WotC was just making your re-buy your stuff for a second time again without adding adequate value.
Pathfinder and 4E is pretty much an apples to oranges comparison when it comes to "success" because their business models and objectives are completely alien to one another. Hasbro obviously is not interested in a dominant position in a dying market. If that's all they can get out of D&D they'd shelve it and make another edition of monopoly.
Instead they keep trying new angles to monetize the brand outside of the old school books-at-the-table model. Sometimes the results are terrible (Gleemax, Digital Initiative, OGL, etc.), sometimes fleeting successes (miniatures), and sometimes the results are more promising (D&DInsider, Board Games).
In the big picture, so little has to do with the difference between a C- game and an A game that it's almost comical. "If you write it, they will come," does not hold true. I'm almost inclined to see the open play-test process as something that justifies itself more as a marketing exercise and a way to infiltrate social media than as a critical function of making a salable product.
- Marty Lund
Pathfinder and 4E is pretty much an apples to oranges comparison when it comes to "success" because their business models and objectives are completely alien to one another. Hasbro obviously is not interested in a dominant position in a dying market. If that's all they can get out of D&D they'd shelve it and make another edition of monopoly.
Instead they keep trying new angles to monetize the brand outside of the old school books-at-the-table model. Sometimes the results are terrible (Gleemax, Digital Initiative, OGL, etc.), sometimes fleeting successes (miniatures), and sometimes the results are more promising (D&DInsider, Board Games).
In the big picture, so little has to do with the difference between a C- game and an A game that it's almost comical. "If you write it, they will come," does not hold true. I'm almost inclined to see the open play-test process as something that justifies itself more as a marketing exercise and a way to infiltrate social media than as a critical function of making a salable product.
- Marty Lund