Who's the Biggest RPG Company?

[diaglo]

i was gonna say White Wolf.

esp after Eve Online bought them.

 

[Darkwolf71]

i was gonna say White Wolf.

esp after Eve Online bought them.

Wait, huh?

CCP bought WW? I had no idea. Of course, I don't care for WoD games, so I wouldn't. Although, I have to take the opprotunity to say, EVE online is the BEST MMO on the market. Period.


Now, for 3rd largest; probably Mongoose or Paizo. But that's just my biased opinion.

 

[diaglo]

Wait, huh?

CCP bought WW? I had no idea. Of course, I don't care for WoD games, so I wouldn't. Although, I have to take the opprotunity to say, EVE online is the BEST MMO on the market. Period.

it was a little while ago. nov 06. iirc.

 

[dmccoy1693]

CCP bought WW? I had no idea. Of course, I don't care for WoD games, so I wouldn't. Although, I have to take the opprotunity to say, EVE online is the BEST MMO on the market. Period.

Press Release dated Nov 11, '06. Mentions plans for EVE RPG and Vampire MMO. I'm guessing that EVE RPG is slated to release this coming GenCon.

 

[dmccoy1693]

Press Release 1, Press Release 2, and Press Release 3. Release 1 talks about the closure of the in-house printing, while the other two releases discuss the termination of multiple game lines (but not necessarily jobs).

Well their general d20 product lines were inactive for quite some time. Makes sense they'd want to clear out their warehouse for newer, better selling products, esp considering that 3.5 was winding down and they probably guessed that the d20 logo license would go bye bye and they'd have to get rid of that stock anyways.

 

[Pramas]

No one really knows the answer to this question because game companies are privately held and rarely make their numbers public. Those that do may exaggerate for PR purposes. WotC is obviously the big dog. For many years Palladium was number 2 but it's hard to say how they are faring after their troubles of a couple years back. These days White Wolf is probably a fair bet for number 2, though the World of Darkness relaunch doesn't seem to have gone over as well as it might have. After that things get even murkier. SJG is a sizable company but card games like Munchkin seem to be driving the company more than GURPS. Paizo carries a pretty large staff, but they also run an expansive online store and publishes boardgames and fiction. Black Industries was up there but has now effectively closed up shop and FFG is licensing its games. FFG is primarily a boardgame company, but now is coming back in a bigger way to the RPG space with WFRP and 40K.

Such speculation can be fun, but it's hard to know the truth of the situation.

 

[kenmarable]

I thought I heard that Mongoose is #3.

Also probably matters if you are looking US sales or worldwide. The impression I get is that Mongoose is huge overseas (and not just in the UK where they are based). So they may be further down the line in the US, but non-US are probably darn near the top. Either way, it's looking like Tier 2 has expanded over the past decade thanks to d20.

 

[Calico_Jack73]

I found the new line of WoD to be pretty good rules wise. But it isn't like D&D in which balance was a main goal.

I think that is a strength of White Wolf. Don't worry so much about balance. If you want to play something... play it and don't worry about if some other PC is more powerful than you.

 

[BigFreekinGoblinoid]

If you are including ccg's and boardgames, then miniatures probably should be considered too - a good portion of Mongoose's products had been mini's, yes? Absolutely a large amount of the D&D brand revenue is from minis...

Games Workshop revenues (Warhammer etc.. ) were 115M British Pounds in '06 and 111M Pounds in '07 - over 200 Million USD!

http://investor.games-workshop.com/latest_results/Results2007/full_year/default.aspx

Rackham SA ( Confrontation etc... ) Is over 50 Million Euros annual revenue for period ending 3/06 if I'm reading this right:
http://www.rackham.fr/pdf_corporate/Communique_sur_les_resultats_annuels_consolides_mars_2006.pdf

I think Wizkidsgames and Privateer Press are private, but I'm thinking they have got to be in the tens of million dollars in annual revenue category. Reaper is probably not far behind?

These are big numbers. Lets put this into perspective a bit. Hoovers.com shows White Wolf at about $5.2 Million in 2007 Revenues - 52 employees

http://www.hoovers.com/Wolf-White-P...tthkcx,src__dbi--/free-co-dnb_factsheet.xhtml

I don't have a Hoovers account, but they give you one free look (per IP address?) if you are interested in looking at Hoovers estimates for any others...