PH3 sales

[yukonhorror]

After approximately a year since the whole piracy fiasco with the PH2, I am curious to see how the sales of PH3 fairs against the PH3.

Although not a completely direct comparison (PH2 seemed to have a lot more content, and more desirable content like barbarians and druids), I think it is close.

I personally think the sales would either be the same or lower. The difference will be the pirated content will be from scans of the physical book, not digital. And the profit will be less, because they won't have those digital sales (which they save a TON of money on).

Those are my thoughts, but I was wondering what the rest of you thought. Maybe wrong forum for this topic, but I took a stab at it.

My main questions are, do you think the sales would be about the same if nothing had changed since last march (i.e. can we make conclusions from comparing the sales between the two??), and if so, how do you think they will compare?

[WhiteTiger]

I wish I knew but I've always believed in a basic of rule of diminishing returns especially in the gaming genre. I would think that sales for PH3 would be equal to or less than PH2 for a lot of reasons not the least of which might be splatbook overload.

The lack of a true digital pdf will only slow piracy not prevent it. The low quality of the scans might drive a handful of people to buy the book but a lot of people don't want to fill up their house with books so they'll just go download a poor quality scan and live with it.

my 2 cents...

[Sascha]

I wish I knew but I've always believed in a basic of rule of diminishing returns especially in the gaming genre. I would think that sales for PH3 would be equal to or less than PH2 for a lot of reasons not the least of which might be splatbook overload.

That, and the Character Builder. A month of DDI is cheaper than any one of the new books. (Same with the Monster Builder and Monster Manuals, I'd wager.)

[MellowTalley]

(Same with the Monster Builder and Monster Manuals, I'd wager.)

Wait there is a monster builder? interesting.

[Sascha]

In the Adventure Tools, yeah. It's not as polished as the Character Builder, but it's there. (It's also the *only* tool, as of current.)

[Farcaster]

I personally think the sales would either be the same or lower. The difference will be the pirated content will be from scans of the physical book, not digital. And the profit will be less, because they won't have those digital sales (which they save a TON of money on).

Since I doubt WotC will give up their sales figures, we'll probably never know. However, from what I have heard, the PDF sales were a minuscule portion of WotC's overall revenue. Granted, there may well be a great deal of profit margin in digital sales, but if you're WotC and PDFs were less than 5% of your sales figures, you're barely going to feel it. And bottom line, will sales be drastically different than PHB2? Maybe, but I doubt it would be because they aren't selling PDFs any more.

[yukonhorror]

that's true...

I was thinking about how WOTC thought they were "losing money" because of piracy. The digital medium may have not been a large piece of the pie, but I am wondering (by having a digital version) are they losing money. Are there less sales because of piracy? Was it worth the bad press/alienation of some of its loyal customer base?

[Slipstream]

I know I would of picked up a few of the digital copies of books from their online store had they kept selling it. I just picked up Pathfinder's Core Rulebook because it was only $10 digital, and I may just pick up the hard back because of how happy I am with the PDF. I personally wish Wizards changed their minds about D&D and Star Wars (especially this, since I'm actively playing it).

[Farcaster]

Don't get me wrong, I definitely wish they would change their minds on it too. Moreso now since I am starting to eye the iPad -- or some other tablet PC -- as a real possibility. I'd love to be able to bring my entire RPG collection with me wherever I went in one convenient and easy to use device. Perhaps with the copyright protections available with some of these new digitial mediums, Wizards will consider venturing back into the "turbulent" waters of electronic media.