Re: Historical Sales Figures for D&D's Various Editions

Jeff Heikkinen wrote:
Chances are suprisingly good that tussock was not wearing pants when he or she said:

TSR didn't track sales figures, that's why they went broke (or so the story goes).

Whose story? Ryan Dancey's was that they failed to do any market research and didn't *understand* what their sales figures were telling them; basically that they didn't have a coherent business plan. But I don't remember anything about not tracking sales. That would be completely ridiculous on its face, rather than merely being a clear error when looked at with the benefit of hindsight.

Yea, OK, "TSR died because it was deaf." When something didn't sell they cancelled it, and spent a fortune producing it's clone, which also didn't sell.
They sure did carry a whole shitload of unsold inventory though, at full ideal sales value on the books no less. 1st edition stuff that was selling well died when 2nd edition was announced, but the unsold numbers were huge.


http://www.atlasofadventure.com/Archive/gygaxinterview.asp
is quite interesting: EGG mentions in it that TSR lost about 50% of it's audience with the release of 2nd edition, which he sees as a device used to take away his royalties on the popular 1st ed stuff. 8]

Given how many 'round here never switched to 2nd edition (or who did switch, but to Cyberpunk, WoD, or even GURPS), that might just be true.

--
    tussock

Aspie at work, sorry in advance.
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