The Gaming Den

I'd like to see the sales figures on 5e stuff. I've heard they're doing better than ever, but I have the feeling I'm getting smoke blown up my ass.

I mean... I feel like most people learn that in their jobs....

Also, I don't even know that it's an accurate model of what happened at 4e. It seemed more like "being in charge of D&D and not being named Mike Mearls gets you fired". So I would guess that the "lessons learned" there are more like "if you have blackmail material on upper management, don't share it with your boss".

I doubt we will ever see sales figures for any edition of D&D. It doesn't get them anything that saying vaguely positive things wouldn't, and it exposes them to the risk of letting people see if the emperor ends up naked. Unless there's some legal issue where they have to disclose, we will continue to get meaningless press statements about how "D&D is doing super well".

Foxwarrior wrote: ↑

Fri Oct 08, 2021 6:30 am

I dunno, if they started charging licensing fees the YouTubers might all just move to Call of Cthulhu...

Hasbro is a publicly traded company, so they do have to release financial information. They do not need to break out their various divisions, and they won't break out sub-divisions.

https://investor.hasbro.com/static-file ... esentation

Wizards of the Coast & Digital
Gaming: Highly profitable business
growing through player expansion, new
games and new IP. Tracking ahead of plan
to double the size of Wizards by 2023

Consumer Products segment +33%; Wizards of the
Coast & Digital Gaming segment more than doubled;
Entertainment segment + 47%

Mearls has specifically said that 5e PHB has outsold any other edition's PHB, which is a specific comparison but still unverifiable. It wouldn't be too surprising, since 5e has been on sale 7 straight years, which no edition has had since pre-WotC days.

Also, one way or another, WotC has been promoted within Hasbro, but how much of that is due to Magic is always the glaring issue there.

While not split into individual edition sales, this is a summary of profit.

https://www.geekwire.com/2021/hasbro-re ... gathering/

Stubbazubba wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 16, 2021 8:43 am

Mearls has specifically said that 5e PHB has outsold any other edition's PHB,

...and here I thought no one could beat Sean Spicer at pathetic, bald-faced lies.

The thing about 5E is that it is The Edition That Everyone Plays AND NO ONE BUYS. If it had outsold 4E, WotC wouldn't have turned the dnd division into a Skeleton Crew, turned the game into abandonware, released the SRD, and called it a day. If it had sold well at all, our Sultan of Sophistry wouldn't have resorted to instead turn dnd into a brand and sell dnd coloring books. If it was "the best selling edition," WotC would have given us several splatbooks and all adventures would have been produced by WotC directly... or what? Did they sell so many PHB that WotC said "ok that's enough, let's not produce more books, I'm tired of winning"?

So, uh. Any updates on this? 6th edition when?

2024 sometime. Source is the "Future of D&D" livestream https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSafNA20fxE

2024! Wow! They must be doing a lot of playtesting and rigorous mathematics to make sure everything is as tight as possible!

And they're taking their prep work so seriously, that they hired the guy that made the latest Street Figther teaser.

Jokes on all you fools. They started production on 6e the day 5e was released. That's why they never made much material for 5e; WotC wanted 10 years to perfect 6e, the first multiple of 3e, the chosen one, the bringer of ends, the walker between gaps, the social conflict system of gods, the - I'm getting carried away here. Oh, it's gonna be so good.

It will be all these things, and more! A true glory to behold! Alas, with ten years of secret development without outside contact, the devs will have lost all connection to reality. The game mechanics will be written with ten years of theory nobody outside of its development was privy to, so people who attempt to read it will usually fail to comprehend its mechanics and bounce right off.