There's a periodical that ranks top ten game companies IIRC. [edit: found the name] Comics & Games Retailer Magazine. I believe Palladium Books likes to quote from it or a similar newspaper found in comic/game stores. No idea on accuracy* as there aren't really public sales figures or even public reports for most companies in the RPG "industry". There are exceptions, SJG (link) being one ('05 report recently posted; see above for link), and Hasbro's stockholder's report is at least quoted from online, if not fully online. Don’t have a link for that but sites like Hasbro.com, enworld.org, or gamingreport.com should have info on it.Originally posted by Baron Saarthuran von Gushiddan:
Where can we find reliable statistics on TRPG vs. MMORPG sales? Is there a "Consumer Reports" type thing for gaming?
MMORPGs at least like to release press releases about high numbers and anything tied to publicly traded companies should be trackable. Offhand 1000 is a good number for a pen and paper RPG non-core book supplement these days. Not even close to MMORPGs' numbers.
As a comparison traditional war boardgames (what pen and paper RPGs largely supplanted) are mostly to the point where they require 250/500 preorders before a product goes into print. Me I prefer boardgames with more elegant rules and shorter playtimes these days anyway so boardgames in the Eurogames style are very welcome.
Ryan Dancy did a survey of RPGs prior to d20 that's on enworld.org (under articles) but you have to be a enworld member to access it now. AFAIK it's the only publicly available document of its kind.
* I tend to go by Kenneth Hite's Out of Box Column more anyway and can't find the above paper anymore. It's free and a good read.
(link to 2003 State of the Industry article)