Paizo Spanks Hasbro: Pathfinder Continues to Outsell D&D

There is no question or ambiguity. Pathfinder is now consistently outselling Dungeons and Dragons. ICv2 just releaed RPG sales ranks for Summer 2011:

Top 5 Roleplaying Games – Summer 2011
	Title	Publisher
1	Pathfinder	Paizo Publishing
2	Dungeons & Dragons	Wizards of the Coast
3	Dark Heresy/Rogue Trader/Deathwatch	Fantasy Flight Games
4	Dragon Age	Green Ronin Publishing
5	Shadowrun	Catalyst Game Labs

This follows on the heels of identical results from the previous quarter:

Top 5 Roleplaying Games – Q2 2011
	Title	Publisher
1	Pathfinder	Paizo Publishing
2	Dungeons & Dragons	Wizards of the Coast
3	Dark Heresy/Rogue Trader/Deathwatch	Fantasy Flight Games
4	Dragon Age	Green Ronin Publishing
5	Shadowrun	Catalyst Game Labs

Pictures of New Pathfinder Minis Released

Pictures of the four prepainted miniatures representing the pregenerated characters in the new Pathfinder Beginner Box have been released. The detail on these prepaints is absolutely stunning. Unfortunately the anime-influenced stylings of the minis are not much to my personal liking. Wizards that look like steroid-injecting professional wrestlers just don't quite fit into my world. I'll stick to my old lead for now... I dig magic users with pointy hats, thieves with lanterns, and hobbits with hash pipes.

Pathfinder Minis:

Old school Grenadier wizards with magic beards and cool hats (from DnDLead.com):

Pathfinder Outselling Dungeons and Dragons

Following a report from a few months back that Pathfinder had tied D&D 4e in sales, it now appears that Pathfinder has surpassed D&D:

On EnWorld yesterday Ryan Dancey, a former D&D brand manager at WotC, said:

Pathfinder from Paizo couldn’t exist without the OGL and the D20 System Reference Document. And according to my industry sources, it’s outselling Dungeons & Dragons a feat (no pun intended) I would have considered almost impossible 10 years ago.

The hobby retailer site ICv2 reports:

As far as the publishing side, Paizo’s Pathfinder line appears to have taken a huge chunk of market share away from D&D, with many stores reporting it supplanting 4th edition as their number one seller.

As of January 18, 2011 the Amazon.com top 5 bestselling Fantasy Gaming items are (removing misplaced fiction books): 

1. Pathfinder: Bestiary 2 
2. Pathfinder: Core Rules
3. D&D Player's Handbook
4. Pathfinder: Advanced Player's Guide
5. Dark Heresy: Blood of Martyrs

This is a remarkable achievement by Paizo. Pathfinder, a retroclone of D&D 3.5, is now outselling D&D 4e. I don't really play either of these games regularly, but I have to admit I'm extremely curious about why players are migrating (back) to Pathfinder in such a big way. This news should be very encouraging to old school gamers, because it shows that retrogaming products with grassroots support can sell big - at least in our relatively small world of roleplaying games.

Ironically - literally as I was writing this post my wife pulled my new copy of the Pathfinder Core Rules out of the mailbox and plopped it on the chair next to me! I've been curious to check this game out...