That's my point.
By year 8-10 you are only left with "Snakes on a Plane" and Niche products. And that stuff cannot compete with big 3PP stuff.
I don't
totally agree.
I think if they'd had a normal release schedule, that would be true, but stuff came out so slow for 5E they could in fact have had hit products if they'd wanted to make them.
But they didn't want to make them. I do think it's probably time for an edition refresh, but there were/are still books that could have been hits. The sheer lack of splatbooks or similar is kind of astonishing.
Plus a lot of 3PP stuff, like Griffon's Saddle, only exists because WotC intentionally ceded that design space. WotC has had 8+ years to come out with equipment/magic item books and gone "Nah" to the idea repeatedly, despite them always being hits in earlier editions.
"Snakes on a Plane of Existence," if you will.
LMAO nice lol.
Planescape isn't a Snakes on a Plane situation, because it's not this meme-y silly thing people love to discuss, it's a bit more like a remake of a very well-regarded but slightly over-intellectual film from the 1970s or something, or a long-distant sequel to something auteur-y but famous from the '80s. Nails are being bitten as to whether it will suck or not.
While I think the new Spelljammer straddled the line between homage and parody, I can't help but feel Spelljammer was something people thought they wanted until they got it.
(That is not a statement of quality about the format or content, it's an observation that "D&D in space" sounds better in abstract than it ever has in practice, and I'm lumping Dragonstar and Starfinder into that category as well).
100%.
Snakes on a Plane is that whole phenom. People love the idea. People think it sounds cool. Then you actually offer to sell it to them? And suddenly they're like "No thanks, maybe another time". There'll always be an audience, but it's not as large as the number of people discussing it would suggest.
On the flipside I think a revived and slightly edgy Dark Sun, preferably lead by a minority/PoC author who loved the original, but understood the problematic elements and wants to reclaim it, could have been a pretty big hit. Especially if it was in a more conventional format.