D&D 5E What would success look like for Next?

[innerdude]

So I'm wondering: what would success look like here? Is there an achievable level of success that will matter to Wizards as a company?

1. Make a profit.
2. Create media awareness of RPGs generally.
3. Create a sustainable fan base of the 5e product line equal to X number of gamers (X will vary depending on WotC's measurables)
4. Set up a core product model that allows "modularity" without over-reliance on splat.
5. Finish a satisfying digital product offering tied to the game.

Somewhere on a white board in Hasbro headquarters, these things are written down.

 

[Umbran]

I don't have any real understanding of the economics involved or of what they'd need to sell to consider this a financial success.

It's going to be whatever bar has been set by Hasbro.

I don't think we've seen any indication that Hasbro sets bars for the RPG division directly. For a while, we had a poster here that help Hasbro stock who reported regularly on the quarterly conference calls discussing profits and such - D&D didn't generally merit mention in those calls, being small potatoes compared to the normal levels of business Hasbro does. It is not at all clear that Hasbro cares, except in terms of the general health of WotC, which pulls in a goodly chunk of change for its parent.

WotC may (almost certainly has) set some internal goals for D&D sales, but perhaps they don't have Hasbro breathing down their necks about it.

 

[DEFCON 1]

We already know the answer:

For those who end up liking the game... it's going to be called a success.
For those who end up hating the game... it's going to be called a failure.

And every single person who comments on it will completely invent their own stupid reasoning and unsubstantiated measureables to explain why their opinion is the right one.



Cynics-R-Us

 

[Wulfgar76]

Perhaps becoming the dominant brand/highest market share of the TableTop RPG Market - an admittedly tiny market that Hasbro probably doesn't blink an eye at.
More valuable to Hasbro is the name Dungeons & Dragons and the licensing for other non-RPG products like video games.

And I will be so bold as to make a prediction: D&D Next will eventually surpass all other Tabletop RPGs in sales and popularity – which will really grind the gears of the D&D Next haters.

 

[Derren]

By now success would already be to convince Hasbro not to cancel the PnP line.

 

[ccooke]

It's going to be whatever bar has been set by Hasbro. We're not going to be privy to it, and we'll only be able to really tell if it's working or not based on how many times they start to take desperate actions or course reversals. You could tell that 4E was struggling to meet expectations because of the introduction of Essentials and the weird packaging experiments that followed.

Basically, if the 5E roll out lacks drama and confusion after about two years, things are probably going well! A boring edition is a healthy edition.

Damn. I wish I'd read this post before I just said something very similar in about a thousand times the verbosity :-/

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Perhaps becoming the dominant brand/highest market share of the TableTop RPG Market - an admittedly tiny market that Hasbro probably doesn't blink an eye at.
More valuable to Hasbro is the name Dungeons & Dragons and the licensing for other non-RPG products like video games.

And I will be so bold as to make a prediction: D&D Next will eventually surpass all other Tabletop RPGs in sales and popularity – which will really grind the gears of the D&D Next haters.

I think (Yes IMHO) that it is a forgone conclusion that next/5e will be the best selling TTRPG on the market for at least the next year if not all the way until the last year of active support for it.

It makes it hard to label anything a success of failure with D&D. If they sell millions of dollars in products, and make #1 for 2 straight years in sales, that can still be called a failure (look at people in this very thread calling 4e one).

What would success look like for Next?

It wouldn't be noticeable to us at all. In fact it might just be in the eye of the beholder... Oh no run it's a beholder...

 

[Yora]

The reason 5th Edition exist seems to be "selling better than 4th Edition did".
Which right now I don't think to be very likely.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

The reason 5th Edition exist seems to be "selling better than 4th Edition did".
Which right now I don't think to be very likely.

and remember 4e sold better then 3e both at launch, and 4e Ebberon campaign setting sold better then the 3.5 one... I doubt it is possible for 5e not to make enough money that any 2 other RPG companies added togather would not be happy with it...

 

[Yora]

That's certainly true, but WotC cancelled all planned releases for 4th Edition when the game had been on the market after 4 years (if I remember correctly). Since they had planned releases for after that point, it wasn't the regular planned end of the product cycle, they must have expected to keep going for some time longer.
And the only reason I can think of why they would do that is that they thought it better to know when to fold them and stop all work immediately before "more money gets thrown out the window". So they must have been unhappy with the profit margin of 4th Edition.

I have no clue why else they would have done it.