Are They Boxing It?

So, WotC have, or are about to, issue reprints of the 1st Edition core rulebooks (the PHB, DMG and MM). They've just announced that they're also doing reprints of the 3.5e core rulebooks in September. And, of course, 4e is still available. That means that all three of the most popular versions of D&D will shortly be in print.

Meanwhile, they're building a new version of the game with the stated goal of reunifying the editions.

To me, this seems to be a bizarre strategy. In order to reunify the editions, then they need to persuade fans of each edition to change over. That already means that they need a new game that's sufficiently better to compel a switch. But surely that persuasion is not helped if you also provide people with a reminder of what they liked about the old edition?

(Also, they had a slight advantage due to scarcity. Getting hold of the 3.5e PHB had become quite difficult, and so a new group were unlikely to choose it. But if you make those rules easily available again, doesn't that remove one more incentive to convert to the new stuff?)

However...

Looking at the 5e playtest rules, I was quite impressed with how comparitively light they were. It really didn't seem to me that those rules would need huge amounts of support - sure, you could introduce lots of new stuff, but unlike the 4e core rulebooks it really felt that the game didn't need it.

And yet, it's near-certain that 5e will follow the same three-book model for the core rulebooks as 1st and 2nd Ed, 3e, 3.5e, 4e, and even Essentials (despite that I'm convinced it's killing the game). That means it will have nearly 1,000 pages for a set of rules that really don't seem to need it. And that means plenty of options built right in to the core.

And we also know that Hasbro, who own WotC, are only really interested in "big" brands - D&D is apparently about a $20-30M per year business, and Hasbro aren't really interested in anything less than $50M+ businesses. If a brand doesn't make that bar, their tendency is to 'box' their brands - put them into an ultra-low maintenance mode for a number of years until they judge the time is right...

Now, I think it's worth noting that 4e really isn't suitable for going ultra low-maintenance. It's almost dependent on keeping lots of supplements in print, on the DDI, on having minis/tokens and battlemats/tiles available. Basically, unless you want to kill it completely, it needs significant resources to keep going at all.

So suddenly I'm wondering if this isn't the masterplan - do a new edition that doesn't require these things, publish only the three core books, and watching sales. If the edition takes off, they can then increase the support it gets, but if it does no better than 3e or 4e, they can safely box it.