(no subject)

[alexandraerin]

Just noticed that the latest news post on D&D Insider mentions that they don't anticipate having the Game Table available this year. Fun. I think they really dropped the ball there... people are already skeptical about the pricing structure. If they'd had this stuff ready to go when the books launched... with a free trial for the whole package available... they'd have a chance to get a large audience segment hooked right off the bat. As it is, the hardcore fans who picked up the 4th edition right away will have had half a year or more to get used to playing without D&DI, using other tools for online groups if necessary.

Yes, people will continue to pick up the books, meaning that there will be some people who pick up the game for the first time after D&DI's been completely rolled out... but a lot of those people will be asking their more faithful friends if the program's worth it. Nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd, and all that.

Comments

[oakthorne.livejournal.com]

Sadly, this is a new approach for Wizards. Unfortunately, while Wizards excels at taking something that has been tried and tested through before and making it very awesome and very marketable, they unfortunately aren't very strong innovators.

They apparently only gave themselves less than a year to make the Digital Initiative happen. I was afraid that they were making book publishing assumptions (in which nine months to a year is more than sufficient to produce a fantastic product) and attempting to apply them to the electronic market (in which a year is just about sufficient to really solidify the foundation of the project).

And yeah, you're right - the opportunity to make this a sudden and smash success has probably sailed at this point. Which isn't to say that all hope is lost - it's just going to take a fantastic product and some real commando marketing in order to make this work. It can't ride the excitement from 4E at this point.

Joe

[alexandraerin.livejournal.com]

Exactly. They're going to have to work hard to sell what people would otherwise have been lining up buy. At the very least, they might have made a public beta of the character stuff they showed off at Gen Con available once the con was over (I really expected that)... get people coming back to the site, get it established as a regular destination for D&D gamers.