Are there hard facts on D&D sales in different editions

[OgreBattle]

Redbox, AD&D, 2e, 3e, 4e and so on.

Any reliable facts on how much they sold?

If so, which one was the best selling?

[Username17]

Redbox, AD&D, 2e, 3e, 4e and so on.

Any reliable facts on how much they sold?

If so, which one was the best selling?

Independent, accurate, and complete? Absolutely not.

But various information dumps have produced interesting data points. You can get a gist of how crazy scattered the information is here. Every so often the company (whether it be TSR or WotC) would drop a sales figure that was specific and presumably factually accurate.

It gets harder in the post-4th edition days, because the company (whether it be WotC or Paizo) went to considerable lengths to obfuscate sales data. Paizo, for example, solicited preorders for Pathfinder before their first print run and then publicly called attention to the fact that they had pre-sold every copy of their initial print run (unsurprising since they had ordered a print run equal to the number of preorders in order to make such an announcement possible). WotC announced in court that the core books for 4th edition had sold "hundreds of thousands" of copies, but they had also redefined "core book" to include everything from Martial Power to Open Grave before making that announcement. Even the reports from the old days are pretty sketchy, like when they announced that they were selling 750,000 a year in 1984, but were presumably including not only DMG and PHB sales together to get that figure - but likely adventures and board games as well.

Probably the best selling edition was 3rd edition. Mostly because WotC said it was the best selling edition at the time, and since then they've made very weird tangential statements like "4th edition had more preorders than 3rd edition" rather than actually claiming more total sales.

-Username17

[theye1]

What I don't get is why WoTC decided too stop Digital Distribution, it's not stopping the spread of piracy and they lose potential costumer like myself (it takes one and a half months for me too get packages because of where I live).

[Username17]

What I don't get is why WoTC decided too stop Digital Distribution, it's not stopping the spread of piracy and they lose potential costumer like myself (it takes one and a half months for me too get packages because of where I live).

At the time they said it was because of all the piracy, but mostly I suspect a profound lack of sales. Their resident weasel face claimed in an interview that they had "proof" that for every legal digital sale there were 10 or more illegal downloads. And right around that time they took a guy to court for having put the PHB2 on Scribd and had it downloaded a bit over one thousand times. And then they pulled the entire digital sales initiative.

Now that's highly anecdotal. It's very likely that when they claimed that illegal downloads exceeded legal downloads by 10 to 1 they were simply talking out of their ass. But it's also seriously possible that they only sold one hundred or less PHB2 pdfs. After all, they were asking like thirty bucks for a digital download and that is information highway robbery.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

I think that FrankTrollman's explanation makes the most sense. Paizo explicitly allows almost all game mechanics to be dumped on an easily accessible wiki. And they still gave 4E D&D a run for its literal money back before WotC abandoned it for 5E.

[hogarth]

Here's the article I usually see quoted in these discussions:
http://www.acaeum.com/library/printrun.html

The most interesting bit to me is the allegation that TSR sold 1 million copies of the basic boxed set in one year (1989).

[shadzar]

Here's the article I usually see quoted in these discussions:
http://www.acaeum.com/library/printrun.html

The most interesting bit to me is the allegation that TSR sold 1 million copies of the basic boxed set in one year (1989).

you mean when hobby stores and Toy-R-Us and comic stores all carried D&D. not too hard to believe in 50 states that each state had stores with portions of 20,000 copies, and if speaking globally, how many countries were they sold in?

TSR sold, doesnt mean end-customers bought them, just that a retailer at least bought them.

im just wondering WHAT boxed set?

Dragonlance board game? Battlesystem D&D skirmish boxed sets? some other board game or combination thereof?

i didnt think that 1135 Introduction to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Game came out until 1991.

i seriously think with miniatures still at a high and coming to a crash in the late 80's that it was the skirmish mini's boxed sets that were able to be played like DDM, or used with 2nd edition.

still it proves you cant trust sales numbers, because it only might show how many stores bought without clause to return which means TSR DID sell them, but nobody ever bought them and a retailer got stuck holding the bag.

[PoliteNewb]

im just wondering WHAT boxed set?

I'm guessing the Mentzer red box Basic set (first came out in '83)? Wasn't that still being published in '89?