Hobby industry sales October 2014 update

ICv2 have released their latest industry stats, for autumn 2014. But, hey? Isn’t it spring in the southern hemisphere? Yes it is, but we can forgive the northern-centric language. Or whatever. The theme is that hobby games have been growing steadily and generally strongly over the past few years.

2014 sees further growth, but not at the rates of 2013. Previous growth rates were covered here, and I talked about the likely size of the industry here.

In board games, Ticket to Ride and Settlers of Catan changed placed as the top and second best selling board games. These are two titles that are starting to have a level of awareness outside tabletop hobbyists. In my experience, at least.

RPG results were interesting. All reports indicate the release of D&D 5th edition has been a success, yet the game was unable to knock Pathfinder off its perch as the best selling game in the RPG category. It appears D&D 5th has been successful in taking lapsed players back into role-playing, and perhaps stealing back other customers who had tried some of the smaller titles. However those RPGers who are playing Pathfinder are sticking with that game for now.

With miniatures there was no change, which is interesting in itself. Warhammer 40,000 is still top dog, Star Wars X-Wing is second, itself dogged by an inability to stock to demand. War Machine, Star Trek Attack Wing, and Hordes makes up the rest of the top 5. To date, Warhammer’s current ‘End Times’ series of releases has not noticeably improved sales of that game. The name may well have other connotations.

Magic: the Gathering continues its trend of strong growth, and I’ll let you know when that ceases.