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Lumping in a whole bunch of different publishers as one “system” makes it even less meaningful, imo. It seems more about framing a narrative than providing genuine data.
It used to be about different systems/publishers though. By including this category we miss out on one more piece of (subjective) data, just to make a point.
It's a good point though The last, and only, time something like that happened was in 3.x days.
What instance are you speaking of specifically?
And one other point about "subjective" measures. If the measures are genuine metrics, no matter how limited, and there are multiple other genuine metrics* pointing to the same conclusion, one is justified in concluding the ranking to be rather more objective than subjective.
I realise you’re not interested in debate, but fwiw this is wrong.
We may have more reason to believe the subjective reports, but they don’t cease being subjective just because there are a lot of them.
In the time of D&D 3.x there were certainly enough 3pp to collect them together and say they are #2 on the ICv2 list (had there been a list in those days - hence the phrase "something like that"), and in point of fact Pathfinder itself would have occupied a spot in the top 5 all by itself no doubt.
Yes that's all great historical information about the volume of third party content, but what you actually said was:
The last, and only, time something like that happened was in 3.x days.
That statement contains none of the qualifiers you added in your reply.
So, adhering only to the content of your previous post: were you saying that there was an instance in the 3.5 era where 3rd Party product was condensed into a single ICv2 entry? If so: in which year and quarter did this take place?
OR were you using the language of someone speaking with authority as you stated your conjecture about the market penetration of d20 OGL content?
Just one example: Amazon sales rank is right there on the product page and having heard authors giddy over making the top 100 on that platform puts the relative success of 5e PHB in proper perspective using just that one metric.
An authors excitement over their work selling well enough to be on Amazon's ranking system is not evidentiary of that ranking have universal applicability. That's using apple butter to prove the existence of apple pie. Consistent and transparent sales figures are the apples. How this still relates to the inclusion of all 5e 3PP content is this: when you bushel all the red apples together regardless of type they may outnumber the green apples, but when you separate them back out into their constituent types you may find the landscape changes.
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To be honest there wasent much data to 'corrupt' to begin with it only really told you who the top 5 companies/products were in the particular area/points of sale they coverd and dosent account for online sales from things like the Paizo website or laces like Amazon. It also never gave you any real numbers (for instance whats the diffrence in numbers between 1st and 2nd, 2nd and 3rd etc)
In fact this actually provides us with more data than usual since it A, shows that amoungst Brick and Mortar shops (Which I believe is what this covers) 5e is doing so well that it's 3pp as a catagory is able to rank higher than most other companies and B, 5e even if you cut out 3pp it's offical product still outsells everything else in this area.
To be honest there wasent much data to 'corrupt' to begin with it only really told you who the top 5 companies/products were in the particular area/points of sale they coverd and dosent account for online sales from things like the Paizo website or laces like Amazon. It also never gave you any real numbers (for instance whats the diffrence in numbers between 1st and 2nd, 2nd and 3rd etc)
In fact this actually provides us with more data than usual since it A, shows that amoungst Brick and Mortar shops (Which I believe is what this covers) 5e is doing so well that it's 3pp as a catagory is able to rank higher than most other companies and B, 5e even if you cut out 3pp it's offical product still outsells everything else in this area.
There's no doubt it's interesting and relevant. But it could have been presented better.
Im also skeptical of the idea it hasnt happened before - the fact they've presented it this way gives the impression that they've always been looking and now things have "tipped". In fact, this survey result is a qualitatively different type from previous surveys with the same name and presentation.
By the way, ICv2 dont have access to direct sale figures but their estimate is intended to capture the entire market (including online sales, Amazon sales, paizo subscriptions and so on).
In fact this actually provides us with more data than usual since it A, shows that amoungst Brick and Mortar shops (Which I believe is what this covers) 5e is doing so well that it's 3pp as a catagory is able to rank higher than most other companies
It doesn’t necessarily show that either, it shows that perhaps that was true during the Spring Quarter of 2020 where the majority of Brick and Mortar game stores were closed or reduced to limited operations. This could just be a snapshot of a unique situation where third party content sold well because of the moment we are in.
and B, 5e even if you cut out 3pp it's offical product still outsells everything else in this area.
We don’t know that the Third Party content was counted toward D&D sales before because there is no data transparency. So the idea that this tells us D&D is still #1 is you separate 3PP out is just conjecture and we already knew that D&D was #1.