D&D Fourth Edition Books To Be Released in June

Bill Slavicsek, R&D director on Dungeons and Dragons at Wizards of the Coast, has announced via his personal column that the three core books for Fourth Edition will all be coming out in the same month. When the new game version was announced at Gen Con this year, the initial idea was that the books would be staggered over a three month period. "After conferring with our various trade partners, the Sales Team here at Wizards came back with word that they'd rather have the three core rulebooks release in the same month than over three consecutive months. As that's how we originally wanted to release them, Brand and R&D got together with our Production Team to see if we could accommodate the request. The answer is YES! The new release schedule looks like this: May: H1: Keep on the Shadowfell 4th Edition D&D adventure with Quick-Start Rules. June 6: 4th Edition Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and Monster Manual." As a note, the article is trapped behind an inane login for the Dungeons and Dragons Insider site. Hey WotC? It's really hard to talk up your new toys when you make it hard to read your content. Why not loosen up a bit?

Comments

Re:Buy our printed material!

[DragonWriter]

D&D 1st and 2nd edition were both on the market for decades.

In the case of AD&D 2nd edition, 1.1 decades (1989-2000), with a substantial revision (though it didn't get an official new version like 3.5) of the core books in 1995.

And 1st Edition AD&D was 1977-1988, also 1.1 decades,

Really, 3rd Edition lasting from 2000-2008 with a revision in 2003 isn't all that much shorter than either of the previous editions.

They are just trying to make people buy tons of their printed material, which is exactly what their business model was with Magic the Gathering.

Yes, their business model is to make people want to buy the products they are producing.

That's pretty much every business model.