NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Iosue" data-source="post: 7669051" data-attributes="member: 6680772">The $50 million thing gets somewhat overblown.  Sure, the 4e pitch was a path to that, but I think it was fairly obvious fairly soon that it wasn't going to do that.  The Digital Initiative was a key part of the strategy, but from early on it was clear that it was not going to be as planned.  Not getting the $50 million didn't kill 4e; it just maintained the status quo for the game (while necessitating staffing cuts).IMO, two things, somewhat related, led to 4e's replacement with 5e.  The first was 2014.  I think it can be assumed that something big was going to happen that year, be it a clear 4.5, or 5e.  The second was that, regardless of how well it was selling, they found that they were not getting the new players they wanted.  Mearls has mentioned how their starter sets always sold well, but they didn't see people moving on to the full game.  Essentials was one crack at this problem, and one that IMO strongly influenced 5e's approach to character class complexity.The only thing Edition Wars influenced was how the transition was done, i.e., the open playtest.  Rather than have the designers design in an ivory tower and then be surprised by public reaction, they could get immediate feedback on their design choices.  And sure, doing a public playtest meant 4e going dark early.  But, as I suggested earlier they were only able to do that because DDI provided steady revenue.  Not because it literally paid for the D&D department's salaries and expenses, but because it let WotC/Hasbro leave the team to its own devices, secure that it was bringing in revenue, even if its only new products were limited edition premium reprints.</blockquote>

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