http://margaretweis.com/21-home-page/56-pipleine-news

QuoteAnd in Marvel news… the economics of licensing a tie-in product is always something we have to weigh carefully. We brokered an admittedly ambitious license with Marvel. Our first event, CIVIL WAR, was successful and well received, but it didn’t garner the level of sales necessary to sustain the rest of the line. We’ve learned from this and are taking a very different approach with the other licensed properties we’re bringing out to you in the next three years. We believe we created a great game. Those of you that have supported us have been terrific, and we appreciate you. But, unfortunately, we will not be bringing any new product out under the Marvel line. We know this affects our customers. Those that have pre-ordered Annihilation will receive a full refund or a credit worth 150% of their Annihilation order to use on existing or future product.

Thought some people might want to know.

A bit of a shame to see them go, as it's another nail to the grave of the industry, even if I was not interested in the slightest. They basically made a game very dependant on add - ons (since as I understand, you kinda need/really want those stats and special abilities lists from the IP heroes list), then release one add on and...declare the game a dead fish?

QuoteOur first event, CIVIL WAR, was successful and well received, but it didn’t garner the level of sales necessary to sustain the rest of the line.

So it was successful how? Did it leave an inspiration for future RPG writers to see - that's a bit early to say. Has it won some awards? I don't see. So perhaps the sales were high enough to declare it a fine commercial success? Well, obviously not, since they led to a cancellation of the line. The only "success" I can see there is a "popular Silver pick" on RPGnow, but as I remember from using Eclipse Phase's PDF sales, you had to sell about 300 copies to get to the silver - not hard to do when you have Marvel IP behind you.

edit: Witness my brilliance anew:

Quote from: Rincewind1;516472Cortex+ games very successful? Hm. Let's take a look at them.

First of all, here's the source of information from which we know that EP's corebook sold 1.500 PDFs {platinum game}, and Gatecrashers sord a little over 400 {gold game}

http://eclipsephase.com/posthuman-2010-year-end-review

In case of MHR, as CRKrueger pointed out, the Marvel himself could ensure a quick raise of the game as Gold Title, so that it'd make an illusion of the game "flying off the shelves" in first few days. But even without such conspiracy theories, let's take a look over it and other Cortex games.

As I had established a few times, a Gold game on DTRPG is something, I suspect, between 400 and hm, I suspected 1000 - 1200 sales.

Let's take a look over the 3 Darlings of Cortex - Leverage, Smallville, Supernatural. Bear in mind, all of those games, are based on very popular (well, Leverage perhaps slightly less, but I even caught an episode of British version of that show on Polish TV - so it's not unpopular, for sure), licenses.

Save the Quickstart Job for Leverage, none of the core products for those series is Gold, which I suspect means their sales are somewhat between 100 and 300. Not that bad - but not stunning success neither. Of course, that's just PDFs - but so is EP on DTRPG. All informations together, it's a safe presumption that Cortex sold about 2k printed copies each, tops.

To compare, Fate - run DFRPG sold 10k copies (pdf included though, but it's Gold on DTRPG - so no more then 1.500 surely), and EP sold 6k printed copies.

Come to think of it, I -do- believe I had all that analysis of "how much is that RPGnow medal really worth" in discussion of MHS much vaunted "success", because it reached gold. Guess I deserve a little huff of "I Told You So" tobacco. :pundit:

Edit: Having re - read the original MHS thread in search of my "RPG INVESTIGATION", boy was I mistaken on Nixon - at least I spent only ten bucks on TSoY. And that pipe ought to be much, much larger.

Apparently you have until the end of this month to buy any of the PDFs you are interested in from Drivethrough before they are all pulled.

Pity, but yeah, it was a very ambitious line.

Still - what exists for it, is good work, and should be easy enough to build on for anyone who wants to.

Given the way disney does licences i'm surprised they lasted this long, next time they try for a disney controlled licence they really need to make sure they have the rights to all regions otherwise i just wouldnt bother because not being able to release outside the us offiically probably harmed the game more than it helped especially given how huge the marvel movies were last summer.

Kinda makes me wonder how long it'll be before the star wars rpg starts hitting similar issues where regions are concerned(though hopefully the fact the licence was made pre disney getting the franchise will help matters)

They tried to make a collectible rpg ruleset, and it blew up in their faces. I'm not surprised one bit.

Quote from: danbuter;648953They tried to make a collectible rpg ruleset, and it blew up in their faces. I'm not surprised one bit.

Yup. Everyone I knew in meatspace was really turned off by how focused it was on playing MARVEL characters in MARVEL events.

Media tie-in rpgs do not have a very successful track record. RPGs are such a marginal business anyway, and it's such a tiny market compred to even books (that are worth the bother) that the cost of administering the license (which involves lawyers) is more than it will ever generate for the copyright holder. The licensing fees are, to a gaming company brutal.

Was it the collectible model? The narrative mechanics? The general decline of both comics and RPG industries?

The collectible model centered around fiction tie-ins was bad, but maybe it was contract-mandated. It really is the hare-brained sort of thing that you'd expect from a clueless suit.

If anything I'm surprised it took that long. I don't mean to sound like a prick, the MWP crew looks like stand-up folks with their hearts in the right places (even if I don't personally care about Cortex or Cortex+), but there it is.

Here's hoping they weren't hit too hard by this. Maybe we'll see it released minus proprietary matyerial as a Cortex+ supers RPG?

And does anyone know anything about the health of the M&M 3e-powered DC Adventures RPG?

Quote from: The Butcher;648969And does anyone know anything about the health of the M&M 3e-powered DC Adventures RPG?

DCA was designed to be a 4-book release, and book 4 is at the printers. They had some major stalls and changed release dates, but all 4 books will see print.

Quote from: The Butcher;648969The collectible model centered around fiction tie-ins was bad, but maybe it was contract-mandated. It really is the hare-brained sort of thing that you'd expect from a clueless suit.

I don't think you can overstate how stupid this was, especially a tie-in to a really divisive and old event like 'Civil War'.

QuoteAnd does anyone know anything about the health of the M&M 3e-powered DC Adventures RPG?

I think it just released the last of the planned big 4 setting books?

They might have made more money just taking the old TSR game, slightly tweaking it, and putting new stats in the back for all the heroes and villains. Not sure of the legality of that though, as I'm not sure Marvel actually owned the game itself. I'm almost certain DC owns DC Heroes though, which IMO is better than what actually has happened: them licensing out their heroes and villains for Mutants & Masterminds.

I was reading the lamentations thread over at Big Purple about this earlier, and I was struck by two things: first, a lot of anger directed at Marvel, with one poster going so far as to imply that 'a lot of Marvel fans wouldn't forget this insult,' and second, that the terms of the license were too restrictive on MWP.

Newsflash, kids: Marvel wants to make money off the license, and if the game didn't move enough product, this is what happens. There weren't enough gamers interested in either the game or the supplement[strike]s[/strike], period. The market has spoken.

I'm sure a lot of those Marvel "fans" probably get their weekly fix of books off of P2P.

Quote from: Endless Flight;648988I'm sure a lot of those Marvel "fans" probably get their weekly fix of books off of P2P.

Comic fans rival Star Wars fans for sheer bitchy-ness.

If I had a nickel for everything someone swore off comics "FOREVER!" after some "insult" I'd probably be more profitable than Marvel or DC