I’ve been unimpressed with 5e since everything after Xanather’s (Tasha’s, ugh) so I can’t imagine that 6e will be a positive change for me. My group is currently playing a Pathfinder 2e Revised game and, if we decided to have me run a D&D game (two of the group hasn’t played) then I’d just run 5e PHB/XGtE.
So long as we don’t have to use any edition’s Grappling rules. 
I might buy it, but the next campaign I run needs to be Swords of the Serpentine, a spectacular swords-and-sorcery game designed by a friend of mine and that I gave my brother for his birthday a few years back (and then realized that the real present would be running the game, not giving him the book).
As I understand it, nobody’s going to buy the new edition rules, as they’re trying to move as much as possible into an online platform that they can stick a subscription onto. So you don’t buy it, you just rent it.
And what I’ve seen of the direction they’re going in, I’m not a fan of anyway.
WotC is publishing “updated” core rulebooks (presumably the Player’s Handbook, Dungeon Master’s Guide, maybe the Monster Manual) but all other content is on their “D&D Beyond” platform (beyond what?) including the “D&D Digital Play Experience”, which is available by subscription:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1310-faq-one-d-d-2024-core-rulebooks-d-d-digital-and
The odd thing about this scheme is they while there is a focus on “… a virtual play space that allows Dungeon Masters to create truly immersive campaigns and players to enjoy a D&D experience where we offload a lot of the rules referencing,” they’re not actually building a player base or larger campaign environment; it’s just tabletop gaming except with fancy graphics and a bunch of additional overhead that you get the privilege of paying for. This would seem an ideal venue for a “Second Life” type virtual immersion, but either they lack the vision or the pockets to implement that. Which, frankly, would probably end up being just as much of a financial bust as all other online virtual world environment but I frankly don’t see them transferring a casual enthusiast base into their “D&D Beyond” monetization space, either.
Stranger
And, frankly, WotC has had VTT-type offerings in development since the 4E days; they recognize that lots of people are playing virtually now, and someone that’s not Hasbro is profiting from that. Maybe they’ll actually get something launched at some point.
But they can’t just “…get something launched at some point”; the players who were going to adopt a virtual table top have largely already done so, and there is now a healthy market of competing VTT platforms. Unless WotC can offer something that is astonishingly better than everything else (and worth the vig that they are going to demand for having invested in the development) then they aren’t going to get mass conversion of users into their proprietary platform, notwithstanding casual users who aren’t that invested in the first place. Offering a ‘new’ edition that isn’t actually new but just modified enough to get players to buy more books is only going to render a small fraction of the overall user base that is already inflated by people who got interested because of Critical Role and the pandemic but are now moving on to other interests or just don’t have the time to invest in TTRPGs.
Anyway, this discussion is going afield from the quasi-survey of the o.p. (as ill-formulated as it was) and while I don’t think that the proliferation of OSR-type games is going to seriously undermine the core D&D fanbase, I don’t think that population is as substantial as riverine spelllords may assume. I wasn’t ever in the scope of potential customers for a new or online edition of Dungeons & Dragons but I don’t think there are proportionally many current players who are, either.
Stranger
Well, yeah, but almost all character stuff was updated.
Crunchier? Jeez, Of the 4 editions, it is the least crunchy, with 3.5 being super crunchy. PF is more crunchy, GURPS is also, and the winner in the crunchy contest is Chivalry & Sorcery.
I consider 5e one of the lesser crunchy games. I mean yeah there is Tunnels and Trolls, but…
3.5 grappling rules were so bad, it was the only thing we had to stop and look up…every…damn…time. And you had to build PCs that could escape.
I think the last D&D(ish) book I bought was the Pathfinder 1E Advanced Player’s Guide. If there’s a D&D 6E SRD, I’ll probably browse through it (just like I browsed through the SRDs for D&D 5E and Pathfinder 2E).
I’m still playing 1st Edition with our inhouse rules additions - 45 years on. 
True, but still more complex than I want. In our online 5E games, we invariably wind up in fifteen-minute debates over interpretations of rule minutiae. When I GM these days, I’m running Fate Core, which is far simpler, and lends itself better to the sort of group storytelling and RP that I prefer to run.
I think there’s a good chance we’ll at least take a hard look at the new edition when our current campaign wraps up. I haven’t been keeping close tabs on the design updates but I do like what I’ve seen. And the iterative nature of the changes will smooth the transition for players who struggle with new rulesets or are simply adverse to change.
I can’t believe they wouldn’t want books on shelves for people to see and remind them that D&D exists. Or for people to buy as gifts and all that.
The cynical part of me imagines a time when you’ll have a rulebook sized box on the shelf containing a D&D Beyond code, sort of like retail PC games these days.
Sure, it’s the least crunchy D&D since the B/E half of BECMI but, in the vast expanse of TTRPGs where you have narrative-only games or games with a single d6 or resolved by handing in chits, playing rock paper scissors, etc it’s gonna be a bit further up the spectrum.
Yeah, there are less crunchy FRPGs, but not many.
There are a huge number of ‘low crunch’ RPGs, from narrative focused games like Fate or HeroQuest to minimal rules games such as Index Card and Tiny Dungeon. Games like Black Hack or Shadowdark are slightly more complex than those but still way simpler and cleaner than D&D 5E (or even the original AD&D for that matter), and even a game like Runequest with its extensive combat maneuvers is still more straightforward and has fewer arbitrary rules or inconsistent systems for resolving conflicts. Just the proliferation of classes and ‘multiclassing’ alone makes later editions of D&D complicated and confusing for people not immersed the nuances of the system.
Stranger
I’m not sure I understand it all but this D&D YouTuber says Hasbro/WotC are back to their greedy ways.
14.5 minutes:
“Corporations are greedy” isn’t really a hot take. Care to summarize what new greedy thing they’re doing?
Inevitably so. Any random gamer can come up with a new system, and many of us have. But a system with more rules than D&D is going to take more time and effort than any but the most dedicated amateurs are willing to devote, so the vast majority of those systems folks come up with are going to be rules-light.
Now, how many players any of those systems ever get is another matter. D&D and Pathfinder, between them, make up a significant majority of the player base, with everything else combined a thin sliver of “other”. And probably the majority of RPGs have zero players, from someone who came up with a new idea and couldn’t convince any of their friends to try it. But just in terms of number of games? Yeah, low-crunch.
There is making profit and there is overt gouging their customers. Did you miss the previous stink over Hasbro/WotC that blew up so big the company actually backtracked? Seems that company is back.
This is about D&D Beyond. Basically the place everyone goes to buy D&D shit/stuff (website).
Previously, if you wanted to by one particular tidbit (like details on a subclass) you could buy just that for like $2.
No more. Now you gotta buy it all. And it ain’t cheap. $50 books.
This makes it harder for new players to get into the game since the cost to do so has jumped big time. DMs can’t just buy one part if one of their players wants to do a particular thing…now they have to buy it all. And, since new stuff is always incoming they have to keep paying.
Presumably you’re talking people who play using their virtual tabletop? Sounds like a good reason not to tie yourself to their very specific ecosystem, I guess. That’s a good practice in general.