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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tigris" data-source="post: 9810334" data-attributes="member: 7043270">So I want to mention some things here, because the "D&D did not sell anymore in 2013" / "4E sold so bad" is a bit misleading, since WotC did decide to to some degree to "Not focus on D&D anymore" which can be seen quite clearly when you look at 2013First: There was pretty much nothing to buy from D&D in 2013:1. Not a single D&D RPG book was released in 2013. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Dungeons_%26_Dragons_rulebooks" target="_blank">List of Dungeons & Dragons rulebooks - Wikipedia</a> so there was from the RPG point just nothing new to buy.2. And even in 2012 only 3 RPG books were released and in general the number of D&D releases for 4e was really slim: <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/the-yet-still-complete-list-of-official-4e-d-d-products-now-with-new-format.299054/" target="_blank">D&D 4E - The yet still complete list of official 4E D&D products: now with new format!</a> so even from the year before there was almost nothing to buy. The only big book (Shadow options) was even released February.3. This means there with the exception of Menzobarane (which is quite neutral) a 2 year gap between D&D 4e and D&D 5e.  The gap between 3.5 and 4e has been less than 6 months (3.5 books being published in 2007 2nd half and 4e being available fully from June 2008 and the first (not so good) starter adventure was playable from may: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keep_on_the_Shadowfell" target="_blank">Keep on the Shadowfell - Wikipedia</a> ). So unlike in 4E where people "just bought the new 3.5 books" people where actually waiting for quite some time to buy some new books when 5e launched.4. Also the last "starter set" for 4E was released in 2010 4 years before 5e released. The last starter set for 3.5 was released in 2007 the year before the 4E release. And these sets are important for bringing new players in.5. There where also a lot less D&D novels released in 2013 than the previous years. (2014 was only a bit better though): <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Dungeons_%26_Dragons_fiction" target="_blank">List of Dungeons & Dragons fiction - Wikipedia</a>6. There were only 2 D&D boardgames released in 2013, one was an expansion to an existing one (so only people who had the original one could buy it) and the other one was an expansion to the not so popular "dungeon command" series: <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamefamily/7307/setting-dungeons-and-dragons/linkeditems/boardgamefamily?pageid=7&sort=yearpublished" target="_blank">Setting: Dungeons & Dragons</a> and none of the release successfull adventure system ones: <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamefamily/9547/series-dungeons-and-dragons-adventure-system-board/linkeditems/boardgamefamily?pageid=1&sort=yearpublished" target="_blank">Series: Dungeons & Dragons Adventure System Board Games</a> (They only started again in 2015)7. Compared to this in 2014 a completly new product line the attack wing launched: <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamefamily/7307/setting-dungeons-and-dragons/linkeditems/boardgamefamily?pageid=6&sort=yearpublished" target="_blank">Setting: Dungeons & Dragons</a> (which was not that popular but its also more wargame than boardgame so BGG stats are not that useful)8. The only really new character options since February 2012 came from 6+6 Dragon magazines published in 2012 and 2013: <a href="https://dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Publication:Dragon_(magazine)" target="_blank">[PLAIN]Publication:Dragon (magazine) - Dungeons and Dragons Wiki[/PLAIN]</a>9. Even Miniatures were not released that much anymore. March 2013 was the newest release of D&D miniatures (5th product in the series). And then in 2014 a complete new series: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeons_%26_Dragons_Miniatures_Game" target="_blank">Dungeons & Dragons Miniatures Game - Wikipedi</a>10. Unlike the 2019 version the 2013 version does NOT include drivethru RPG which in 2021 made 21% of their sales through there. And 4e was at that time already on drivethru RPG: <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/de/product/163174/neverwinter-campaign-setting-4e" target="_blank">https://www.drivethrurpg.com/de/product/163174/neverwinter-campaign-setting-4e</a>Here is the excellent visualization made by a forum member: <a href="https://www.enworld.org/attachments/1758289100154-png.417479/" target="_blank">https://www.enworld.org/attachments/1758289100154-png.417479/</a> 2013 just has nothing after 2012 already had not too much.Second: The tail of sales 4E are surprisingly good!1. In 2013 as above mentioned there where no books released only some dragon magazines , so D&D insider was not as useful and the estimation we got in another thread was AT LEAST 73,387 subscribers by the end of 2013. At least because only the people who had a subscription + did have a WotC forum account were counted. It made around 3.4 millions in 2013 (even though no new products). It had a yearly subscription fee of 72$ which would make 47 000 subscribers.2. Wait didnt we say there where at least 73k subscribers by the end of 2013? <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/how-many-people-subscribe-to-d-d-stuff.308250/page-17" target="_blank">How many people subscribe to D&D stuff?</a> Yes, but this means that most people did not subscribe for a year, because you could pretty much just download everything even if just subscribing for a month (for 10$). This means that there was a constant shift of people starting and ending subscriptions (which also would allign with these numbers here: <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/how-many-people-subscribe-to-d-d-stuff.308250/page-14#post-6101299" target="_blank">How many people subscribe to D&D stuff?</a>3. As seen in the above post (image) the number of subscribers was actually growing over time! Even in mid 2013 with no releases it was still growing (then end of the year it was going down again).4. WotC made in 2019 300 000$ with D&D Insider. Well thats surprising since since 2015 one could no longer buy new subscriptions! <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/4e-dnd-insider-moving-no-longer-available-to-new-subscribers.663486/" target="_blank">D&D 4E - 4E DnD Insider Moving; No Longer Available To New Subscribers</a> This means all these people who had it still in 2019 had it the whole time since 2015. And a service which cant get new subscribers normally dwindles a lot faster! Since people change credit cards, unsubcsribe, go broke etc. all the time. So having a stream of new subscribers is normally important. Also as we see in the data above people were actually before often only subscribing for a short amount of time. So this change made a huge difference.5. From this we can assume that even with a linear decay (which is not realistic since after 2015 the dropoff was a lot harsher most likely), in 2014 D&D insider still made roughly 3 millions. (roughly 500k less revenue per year in average over the 6 years from 2013 to 2019).6. In 2019 D&D made around 15 million of the 71 million revenue through drivethrurpg with pdfs. Do you know which edition was never released as pdfs? Correct 5e. 4E was the first edition released in PDF form.7. The PDF release for 5e was not repeated because the PDFs for 4e were often pirated (you can still find them on google search today...) so unlike previous editions it was a lot easier to not buy the game.8. We can see which books sold most on drivethru RPG: <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/metal.php" target="_blank">https://www.drivethrurpg.com/metal.php</a> and we can see that the top books are not 4e, but older ones, but there are quite several books from 4e at some tiers below. And one thing one should take a look at is the release date: <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/de/product/17003/players-handbook-1e" target="_blank">https://www.drivethrurpg.com/de/product/17003/players-handbook-1e</a> all the non 4E books were later added to drivethru RPG. So any PDF sales WotC had in 2014 (which I am not sure if we have the statistics of as well), were from 4th edition pdfs (unfortunately in the riggs post we have only the 2013 and 2019 numbers: <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/ben-riggs-interviews-fred-hicks-and-cam-banks-then-shares-wotc-sales-data.715929/#post-9786634" target="_blank">D&D General - Ben Riggs interviews Fred Hicks and Cam Banks, then shares WotC sales data.</a> )Third: Initial 5e Sales were not that special D&D became a huge hit later1. in 2014 WotC made only 29 million with D&D. This with a new edition coming out after 2 years of no books! (as discussed in the above ben riggs thread). And as shown above several of these millions were still D&D 4e (all pdf sales + 3 millions D&D insider). Especially since D&D started again with big marketing like launching a new adventure league: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20140703051949/http:/www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/news/adventurersleague" target="_blank">Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (Coming Soon: D&D Adventurers League!)</a>2. This is about the same amount of money D&D did make in 2005 (which was mid release!): <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%26D_Insider" target="_blank">D&D Insider - Wikipedia</a>3. The launch of 4e first year was actually huge, so this peak of a bit more than double sales is not so big, 4E almost instantly outsold 3E at launch: [MEDIA=reddit]rpg/comments/vt1242/comment/if6626d[/MEDIA]4. What made 5E special was that it did not drop sales the year after, but 2015 was also the year critical role started and became popular: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_Role" target="_blank">Critical Role - Wikipedia</a>5. The D&D 5e sales doubled in 2017. Stranger things released the year before: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stranger_Things" target="_blank">Stranger Things - Wikipedia</a>So yes 5E was a huge success thanks to many factors, but the initial release was not that special, and the "4e sold not in 2013" is also not that surprising with no products...</blockquote>

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