Maybe a bit more on-topic, but almost one year later and Shadowrun 6e CRB is at the "Platinum" level on DTRPG. That's one tier below SR Anarchy, which had a similar reception, and two tiers below 5e CRB and 4e 20A CRB.
For comparison, Anarchy was also at Platinum
one year after release.
5e was at Platinum
two years after release (I couldn't find an earlier archive). Same with 4e,
six years after it was put on DTRPG.However, at the time,
DTRPG only marked products as high as platinum, so it's hard to say if this is a good comparison to the platinum level of 6e and Anarchy. We know that the minimum is the same since Love and Sex in the Ninth World was a Platinum at the time,
and is still Platinum. DTRPG was also smaller at the time, so it's hard to say if they had as high of a percentage of sales as they do now.
I wouldn't speculate on what the exact ratio of DTRPG sales is to total sales, but I think it's fair to say that the ratio will be approximately the same among all these books. If anything, I'd say more people are choosing digital books over physical books than they were 10-20 years ago. But again, it's impossible to say for sure.
I'm not going to underestimate the power of the "long tail" when it comes to sales, especially with long-lived things like TTRPGs. But given
the tiers for DTRPG, we can say that right now, 6e has about half the sales of Anarchy, and about a fifth of the sales for 5e CRB and 4e CRB (At most, it has 40% of the sales that 5e and 4e have- assuming that 6e is one sale away from the next tier, and 5e/4e are just barely making the cut for Adamantine).
The rigger and magic books were also delayed, and I anticipate they'll have a similar reception to Firing Squad (Released 3 months ago, sitting at Electrum.) Run & Gun is at Mithral, but was released 6 years ago.
However, Run & Gun was already at platinum 3 months after its release. Late late edit: Can't believe nobody else noticed I was a year off. Whoops!
We can compare 30 Nights and Cutting Black to some of 5e's campaign books as well. 30 Nights is at electrum, 5 months after release. Cutting Black is also at electrum, 7 months after release. Today, Stolen Souls is at platinum, Lockdown is at gold, Bloody Business is at gold, Hard Targets is at platinum, Market Panic is at gold, Cutting Aces is at platinum, Dark Terrors is at platinum, and Better than Bad is at platinum.
I looked at these on archive 6 months after release to get the comparable details (Some I had to go out later or earlier, due to lack of archived pages).
Basically:
| Book | DTRPG Sales Today_ | DTRPG Sales at X time After Release_ | Current Rating | # of Ratings |
| 6e CRB | 1000 - 1999 | 1000 - 1999, 1 year after release | 2.6 | 51 |
| 5e CRB | 5000+ | 1000+, 2 years after release | 4.1 | 158 |
| 4e20A CRB | 5000+ | 1000+, 6 years after release | 4.6 | 72 |
| Anarchy | 2000 - 4999 | 1000 - 1999, 1 year after release | 3.6 | 56 |
| Run & Gun | 2000 - 4999 | 1000 - 1999, 3 months after release | 4.2 | 38 |
| Firing Squad | 250 - 499 | 250 - 499, 12 months after release (Late edit again...) | 3.0 | 8 |
| Cutting Black | 250 - 499 | 250 - 499, 7 months after release | 3.69 |
| 30 Nights | 250 - 499 | 250 - 499, 5 months after release[/b] | 3.33 |
| Stolen Souls | 1000 - 1999 | 500 - 999, 12 months after release | 3.416 |
| Lockdown | 500 - 999 | 250 - 499, 5 months after release | 4.02 |
| Bloody Business_ | 500 - 999 | 250 - 499, 6 months after release | 3.54 |
| Hard Targets | 1000 - 1999 | 500 - 999, 6 months after release | 4.19 |
| Market Panic | 500 - 999 | 250 - 499, 6 months after release | 3.52 |
| Cutting Aces | 1000 - 1999 | 500 - 999, 6 months after release | 3.54 |
| Dark Terrors | 1000 - 1999 | 500 - 999, 6 months after release | 4.67 |
| Better than Bad | 1000 - 1999 | 1000 - 1999, 12 months after release | 4.513 |
(Late edit- editing the table broke it a bit... sorry)
It's hard to tell what effect the CRB sales have, since DTRPG was not as big when the older books were released.
The campaign books are on-par with the 5e campaign books that did not do so well. We can expect them to move from Electrum to Gold over the next few years, but I don't think they'll go farther than that.
However, comparing Run & Gun with Firing Squad is very telling: 3 months after release, the 6e book has between 12.5% and 50% of the sales that the 5e book did. After the core books, the addition rule books make the most sales, followed then by campaign books, missions, etc.
The other 5e rulebooks are a little bit sketchier to compare than the campaign books, since there might be a different number of people interested in Rigger 6 versus Firing Squad.
Still, Rigger 5
was at Platinum, Chrome Flesh was at
Gold, and Data Trails was at
Gold. I couldn't find an archived page of Run Faster or Steet Grimoire closer than 1-3 years, so I didn't include them here.
As far as I can tell, Firing Squad is performing significantly worse than any of the other core rulebooks. I think this is more telling about the state of 6e than the campaign books, since some people just get the campaign books to read them, not to use them with a certain edition. However, people will typically only go for these kinds of books if they intend to use the rules in them with a particular edition. Whereas the 6e campaign books are performing on par with the worst of the 5e campaign books, Firing Squad is performing a tier below the worst of the 5e rules books.
Again, it's impossible to extrapolate "total sales" from DTRPG sales. However, I highly doubt that the proportion of people buying physical books compared to digital is significantly higher than it was 5 years ago. If anything, more people are buying digitally, but I don't think that will have a strong effect on this data.
