Voadam
Legend
Yes, but what the chart looks like to me is that new players were consistently down and declining for the five years after the fad when there was just 1e and no 2e yet.Ok. But we've still got around 1.5 million people who already owned a 1E PH when 2E came out, vs. under 300k people buying a 2E PH in its release year, and under a million people buying a 2E PH ever.
Sure, we agree that a lot of 1E players DID get one. But clearly a lot of them didn't, even if we were to assume that ALL 2E PHs were bought by existing 1E players, and discounted brand new players entirely.
Then there is the silver medal 2e release spike year. Then a lower than fad but greater than post fad period of years of new sales for 2e for a spread of years, so it seems it was doing as good or slightly better than 1e outside of the fad to start for a good period of years then continued the decline trend.
I have no basis for saying whether the 1e players from the fad spike were continuing with 1e or were done with D&D entirely. So I can't really infer that because at least half a million of them did not get the 2e PH it was because they were unhappy with 2e changes.
Could have been, could have been half a million people who tried out D&D during the fad and left and were not buying any more D&D books. Could have been people who felt happy with their 1e core books and just got 2e supplements for more stuff to use with their compatible D&D games. Probably a mix but anybody's guess as to the proportions.
My guess is that the release year core book bump mostly shows old edition fans buying a new edition, but years afterwards it is mostly new fans coming into the hobby. How long new fans stay, I could not say and core books sales would not really touch on that.
I have stuck with it for over 40 years as an active hobby, but I also know people who played as kids and then stopped.
A big relevant unknown number for this would be how may people were playing 1e when 2e came out. If a lot of people played for four years or less then dropped out then a lot of the fad buyers would have already dropped D&D when 2e came out. If a lot would have stuck with it then that would have different implications on the 2e sales numbers.