Quote:
Originally Posted by Toblakai
This!
3.0 - 3.5 -> 3 years
3.5 - 4.0 -> 5 years
4.0 - 5.0 -> 6 years (4.0 was effectively abandoned after 4 years)
5.0 -> 4 years so far..
Average lifespan of a D&D version (under Hasbro) is 4,66yrs. When they abandon a version they do a slash and burn on their website for their old version.
New versions make lots of money.
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New versions do make money, but I don't think 3.5 should count as a different version from 3.0 - after all 3.0 and 3.5 WERE so compatible, you had to look at the version number on the inside of a book to determine which one you were looking at. Plus, all 3.0 material didn't have to be converted to play 3.5 - or even Pathfinder for that matter meaning that 3.0/3.5 has lived much longer although Paizo took it over. It is possible another company could do the same for 5e.
Recalculating your average then would put 8 years of 3/3.5 and 4 to 6 years of 4.0 meaning the average lifespan is closer to 6.5 years ([8+5]/2).
You can look at
wikipedia and see that the list of books for each version and can tell that 3.0/3.5 was rivaling 2nd edition in bloat in a shorter time. 4e had a book a month plan and it was almost impossible to avoid a D&D Insider subscription to keep up.
5e is a calmer, slower beast. If they decided to go to 6th edition tomorrow to steal thunder from PF2 it would surprise me considering they haven't milked 5th edition profit from the online tools enough yet.