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Paper books are heading the way of the dinosaurs, not quickly but it's happening.

IMO, a dedicated app for tablets and computers is the most logical way to go, speaking about mylocal gaming groups, we would have bough more books if they were PDFs and the books we did buy quickly became out of date with all the erretas.

If WotC open a store with linked products from it and 3rd party developers (I.e you buy a book with new fighter powers and it's added automatically to your player handbook) with a quick and easy way to receive new books and advantures and more importantly the ability to admit them to your own use they will have a gold mine.

Each book should have a code for a copy of the book in the app and there should also be the ability to buy the books in the app itself.

Warder 

Jan 14, 2012 -- 8:11AM, Warder17 wrote:

Paper books are heading the way of the dinosaurs, not quickly but it's happening....If WotC open a store with linked products from it and 3rd party developers

My point was if WotC is worried about money, then having a digital content management system can cut out 3rd party developers from integrating their products with WotC's as easily as they have been using paper.

If 4e sales are slipping, why? Because they put out far too much material for any one gaming group to use. After the PHB2, there was less and less that we needed/wanted, and the books started having much fewer pages, making them not such a great value.

Perhaps they should put out a "second printing" of the 4e PHB and DMG that include the errata. There's no way my group is going to keep track of all the changes they've made.

If someone doesn't like 4e, they're free to keep playing 3rd or 2nd or AD&D. Or Skyrim or Wow or Dragon Age or yes, even Pathfinder. I don't see how making an "inclusive version" could possibly work. 
This comic says it best:
art.penny-arcade.com/photos/i-xTWHDNT/0/...

I'd like D&D 5.0, or whatever it's named, to look a lot like Star Wars Saga Edition.  Seriously if you haven't played it you should.  Think a it as a simple and elegant blend of 3.5, and 4.0.  It has D20 modern style talents and D&D3.5 style classes, prestige classes.  Healing, movement, skills and defenses are closer to 4.0, but the AC and Ref rolled into 1 (armor adds onto ref, but limits the dex bonus, armor can also boost fortitude defense), and the 4th defense is damage threshold (fortitude defense + misc extra, basically a feat that increases damage threshold but not fortitude defense) tied to a condition track that melds almost all the various conditions into a single entity, think of it as being similar to being "bloodied" in D&D 4.0 but with a bit more granularity.  Many people who've played SAGA says that the damage threshold plus condition track is the single best game mechanic in ANY system they've EVER played.  Combat is fast because you generally get one attack per round unless you spend feats, and area attacks use a single attack and damage roll for all targets in the area of effect.  

The Force power system is a good deal different than either D&D 3.5 or D&D 4.0 spell casting.  In D&D terms, a lot of minor "magic" (D&D 4.0 at-wills) are free.  But you have to spend feats to get "spell" slots for significant stuff (say a fireball), and you get 1+attribute modifer "spells" per feat.  You get your entire "spell" suite back each encounter or by rolling a natural 20 on"use magic" check" within an encounter.  You can get one "spell" (of your choice) back mid encounter by spending an "action point."  With a slight modification you could get daily, encounter, and at-will spells with the same feat, with one spell slot being one spell slot; dailies would be more powerful and wouldn't come back each encounter, and at-wills can be used as many times as you like.  This would cleanly solve the "problem" of having different levels of spells, now there's only 3, and running out of spells in a day.  And if you like you could add in D&D 4.0 style rituals as a 4th category.  

Oh and SAGA has backgrounds similar to D&D 4.0 (I think Rodney borrowed the idea from 4.0). Star Wars SAGA edition made Rodney Thompson (the lead designer) is my all time rpg hero! Gary Gygax is a very distant second.  And if you're looking for examples of brilliance in game design, the rules for swarms, squads, and mass combat are well, elegantly simple and ingenius.  Collections of individuals are melded into a single larger entity with simple rules on how to modify the base stats of an individual to get them.  All Hail King Rodney, Long Live the King!  Oh and I'm sure that with lessons learned, Rodney Thompson could iron out the few wrinkles left in the rule set.