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 Tannhauser42 wrote:

Backfire wrote:

Now, I do think that GW is doing quite a many things wrong, but the idea that we're in middle of some kind of miniature wargames boom which GW is missing, is not supported by any evidence I've seen.

Privateer Press, Mantic, Corvus Belli (Infinity), Wargames Factory (and Dreamforge Games), Raging Heroes, Perry Brothers, Chapterhouse Studios, Kromlech, Puppets War, MaxMini, Spartan Games, Wyrd, Hawk Wargames, Warmill, Antenociti's Workshop, CNC Miniature Scenery, Sarissa, Warsenal, Micro Arts Studios, Secret Weapon Miniatures, and countless other miniatures/wargaming manufacturers that have all seen their businesses grow significantly in the past few years while GW has remained stagnant (even with rising prices and cutting costs), would like to have a word with you.

And what word would that be? Most of the companies you list are sub-millionUSD operations.
Lets not forget that there are also miniature companies which go under. Rackham, for example. So just because you can list some companies which have grown, doesn't mean that the whole segment is doing great. Undoubtely some companies are growing at GW's expense, since GW no longer produces games in many subcategories (skirmish, spaceship combat etc).

 Wayshuba wrote:

Let's say then, for sake of the discussion, that PP is currently in the $15M-$18M range (I would say that it is probably a safe bet since Hoover's reports their revenue at $5.2 million and my experiences with Hoover's shows their private company reporting to be about a quarter to a third of actual revenues - they reported the last company I worked for as $45 million in sales when actual revenue were just shy of $220 million). ICv2 currently shows WHFB slipping out of the top 5 and both Warmachine and Hordes in the Top 5. Given that they represent $15M-$18M in sales, WHFB would have to be below them to have fallen off the top 5. Now, it is probably a bit more in reality, but I don't think it is that much more. Also, watching the emphasis GW has thrown behind 40k in the last six months especially, their behaviors seem to indicate this to be the case.

You have been throwing out completely wild numbers. First you said in a previous thread, that Privateer Press was around $20 - 40 million and now you are backtracking and saying they are around $15 - 18?
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/360/575487.page#6487113

Then you back-up your data with the Hoover site info and how they are generally around 3 to 4 times off based on your experience. But you dismissed Hoover numbers previously saying based on your experience they are off by a factor of 10.
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/390/575487.page#6490788

And just to show how off ICv2 numbers are, when X-wing exploded on the scene and was #2-3 on the charts for 2012-2013 it made only $2.5 million for FFG in domestic sales. This came out last year when discussing the 2013 financial results for FFG. That was not even 5% of GW's North American revenue for that same period.

You say FFG made $2.5 million. To me, making is profit. Revenue is not profit.

OTOH, $2.5 million sales would be pretty good for a new game and 10% of FFG's annual revenue. It would seem unlikely for me that a single game would make more than 10% of the company's revenue, given how many different titles FFG has.

You're kidding, I've probably spent close to that on X Wing myself!

But seriously, every single release sells out almost everywhere immediately, restocks evaporate almost as quickly, and one must assume they're doing their best to increase production with each successive round of orders, assuming the factory isn't already at the limit of its capabilities, and you are having a hard time believing it is generating $2.5m in sales worldwide?

Pull the other one, it's got cookies.

EDIT
That's not even 100 000 starters, and as we appear to be allowed to use anecdotal evidence in this discussion, I don't know anyone who plays who hasn't bought multiple copies.

Backfire wrote:
And what word would that be? Most of the companies you list are sub-millionUSD operations.

You say that like it means something.

Purely anecdotal again, but I reckon more than 50% of the 40k players I know have spent some cash on x wing, with more picking it up every month. And it seems to have a knack of draining wallets rather successfully.

 silent25 wrote:

 Wayshuba wrote:

Let's say then, for sake of the discussion, that PP is currently in the $15M-$18M range (I would say that it is probably a safe bet since Hoover's reports their revenue at $5.2 million and my experiences with Hoover's shows their private company reporting to be about a quarter to a third of actual revenues - they reported the last company I worked for as $45 million in sales when actual revenue were just shy of $220 million). ICv2 currently shows WHFB slipping out of the top 5 and both Warmachine and Hordes in the Top 5. Given that they represent $15M-$18M in sales, WHFB would have to be below them to have fallen off the top 5. Now, it is probably a bit more in reality, but I don't think it is that much more. Also, watching the emphasis GW has thrown behind 40k in the last six months especially, their behaviors seem to indicate this to be the case.

You have been throwing out completely wild numbers. First you said in a previous thread, that Privateer Press was around $20 - 40 million and now you are backtracking and saying they are around $15 - 18?
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/360/575487.page#6487113

Then you back-up your data with the Hoover site info and how they are generally around 3 to 4 times off based on your experience. But you dismissed Hoover numbers previously saying based on your experience they are off by a factor of 10.
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/390/575487.page#6490788

And just to show how off ICv2 numbers are, when X-wing exploded on the scene and was #2-3 on the charts for 2012-2013 it made only $2.5 million for FFG in domestic sales. This came out last year when discussing the 2013 financial results for FFG. That was not even 5% of GW's North American revenue for that same period.

First thread was before Templecon discussions were forwarded and was an estimate based on the factors cited in the thread based on GW numbers. That was January while Templecon was in February. That is why I gave a VERY WIDE $20 million range estimate.

The second thread link is correct, note I said very clearly EARLY in research projects. When you first start market research you build a window, and then correlate between reports and other data to build reasonable assumptions. So you start by building a wider window (which is why I noted the "early" part in that thread). This thread has been getting closer to actuals, so I have parlayed that information herein. Note that the specific example I gave above is more than than 3-4x I noted. Sometimes Hoover's will be low, sometimes high - but an average of 3x to 4x. Note the example I used in the thread was also for the same company on the year prior to the one noted above in this thread. As I mentioned earlier, find one private company where you know the revenue for sure and look them up on Hoover's. Here is a simple example though - Hoover's lists Reaper Minis at $3.2M in revenue (http://www.hoovers.com/company-information/company-search.html?term=Reaper%20Miniatures). Yet Reaper did last year with the Bones II Kickstarter almost $3.2 million alone(https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1513061270/reaper-miniatures-bones-ii-the-return-of-mr-bones?ref=live). So you can bet that Hoover's is very low in their estimate.

3.) Lastly, I gave the references above in this thread. Anyone is free to check them out to correlate if they feel I am throwing wild numbers around.


Finally, why would FFG, a private company, discuss individual product financials openly. It's one thing for a private company to mention their overall revenue, but I have not seen one to openly disclose individual elements of their financials. Can you provide a source for where FFG discussed their financials? One small note too, in your example you cite sales of X-Wing only versus sales of all of GW North America. Also, while I have no direct data to cite, I indeed find it hard to believe that X-Wing did only $2.5 million. That would make PP, based on that chart, a company with less than $2.5 million in total revenue. Seems a bit of a stretch.

Lastly, on the growth of FFG - 2008 total sales of $12.9 million, 2013 sales above $30 million (http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/548047.page). FFG has also said they have grown 25% YoY since 2000. (http://www.purplepawn.com/2013/08/fantasy-flight-games-2013-in-flight-report/)

I think the KS is interesting, but I dunno if we can consider that "growth" yet, if only because it's a really really new market. I think it'll be a lot more telling from 2013-2014.

I think it's also to consider, with Kickstarter, that there are a lot of established companies eschewing "traditional" methods of production and capital raising for Kickstarter, which I'd assume skews the numbers a bit. Clearly there's a growing market in KS, but I think we'll know a lot more next year, and even more in 3-5 years when we see how the longevity for products created with KS is.

 azreal13 wrote:
You're kidding, I've probably spent close to that on X Wing myself!

But seriously, every single release sells out almost everywhere immediately, restocks evaporate almost as quickly, and one must assume they're doing their best to increase production with each successive round of orders, assuming the factory isn't already at the limit of its capabilities, and you are having a hard time believing it is generating $2.5m in sales worldwide?

Pull the other one, it's got cookies.

EDIT
That's not even 100 000 starters, and as we appear to be allowed to use anecdotal evidence in this discussion, I don't know anyone who plays who hasn't bought multiple copies.

2.5 For the domestic US number. Was $5 million total worldwide sales. One correction, that is FFG revenue for X-wing. So retail sale revenue would put it at ~$5 million domestic, ~$10 million world wide.

FFG stated in their Gencon presentation, miniatures make up about 16% of their revenue.

Sean_OBrien provided those monetary numbers. He stated from his talking with people inside FFG, X-wing made up almost all the miniature sales for FFG in 2012 - 13. Sean kindly provided links to the GenCon info and relevant articles:
http://www.twincities.com/business/ci_23785236/putting-games-back-table

http://www.purplepawn.com/2013/08/fantasy-flight-games-2013-in-flight-report/

FFG is very open about discussing its financials and their sales have been doing well thanks to a very diversified sales range.

As I said, those ICv2 numbers are horribly inaccurate and have very little correlation to real sales.

@Wayshuba, you still seem to be make no sense. So the x10 number is only valid for early estimates, but then when you do deeper digging, it is always 3 - 4 times? Yet you just stated about using the 3 - 4 for backing up company sizes for your purpose regardless of research. You're talking out both sides of your mouth. Dismissing again the numbers when they work against your, but rallying around them when you need to defend your numbers. All I'm seeing is Hoover is horribly inaccurate and shouldn't relied for any real value. The 3 - 4 is just a random number you are throwing out to justify your argument. If the 3 - 4 number has always been your rule of thumb, where the hell did you get the $20 - 40 million for PP? Going by your own arguments now, that should have been a $15 - 20 million estimate as the Hoover numbers haven't changed in the last several months. You're making stuff up.


*edit* looks like Wayshuba found the old discussion.

Regarding FFG, 16% of $30 million is less than $5 million. I wonder if that includes board games with miniatures, like Descent and Doom. OTOH that's last years number and probably misses quite a bit X-wing sales.

Just read this thread from "cover to cover", as it were. A very interesting read.

I'd give the victory to Backfire personally. Wayshuba seems to be spewing out dubious numbers - without caveats - as well as obvious nonsense like Kickstarter trends representing growth...and yet we all know that Kickstarter itself is growing. If I open a new online store and growth of paperback books increases by 300% in the first year, it means my *store* is more popular, not paperback books. Frankly the fact that he didn't even mention this obvious flaw makes me question his credentials, that and the fact that he doesn't seem to have proven a single one of his claims, despite the fact that they should be easily provable.

KommissarKarl wrote:
Just read this thread from "cover to cover", as it were. A very interesting read.

I'd give the victory to Backfire personally. Wayshuba seems to be spewing out dubious numbers - without caveats - as well as obvious nonsense like Kickstarter trends representing growth...and yet we all know that Kickstarter itself is growing. If I open a new online store and growth of paperback books increases by 300% in the first year, it means my *store* is more popular, not paperback books. Frankly the fact that he didn't even mention this obvious flaw makes me question his credentials, that and the fact that he doesn't seem to have proven a single one of his claims, despite the fact that they should be easily provable.

Yet that is all useful data to form a base of opinion for a larger marketing research project. Everything that Wayshuba has said so far is relevant to the discussion at hand. However, it is by arriving at a larger understanding of the relationships between macro and micro market potentials, growth, and declines that a bigger picture can be put forth to fully produce a comprehensive analysis.

I would be nice if GW would Follow their competitors, "Hey, X-wing the space battle miniature game is doing well, didn't we kill a similar like this a few years ago?"

I am still pissed that FFG dumped Dust Tactics!

Yeah you'd think that they'd have noticed that for pretty much every specialist game they dropped, someone else has produced a successful equivalent (apart from WHQ, Manowar and Space Hulk), and that they'd want to do something about it.

Herzlos wrote:
Yeah you'd think that they'd have noticed that for pretty much every specialist game they dropped, someone else has produced a successful equivalent (apart from WHQ, Manowar and Space Hulk), and that they'd want to do something about it.

Both WHQ and Space Hulk are simple miniature dungeon crawlers, one in a fantasy setting and the other one in a sci-fi one... There are literally tens of games like those in the market.

As for Manowar, Spartan Games used to produce a similar game in Uncharted Seas, but we can't really call it "successful" since they stopped selling it last year.

I think it was successful, and I do believe they still put out new stuff for it (sky pirates last year), its just dyst wars and firestorm armada are far greater successes.

KommissarKarl wrote:
Just read this thread from "cover to cover", as it were. A very interesting read.

I'd give the victory to Backfire personally. Wayshuba seems to be spewing out dubious numbers - without caveats - as well as obvious nonsense like Kickstarter trends representing growth...and yet we all know that Kickstarter itself is growing. If I open a new online store and growth of paperback books increases by 300% in the first year, it means my *store* is more popular, not paperback books. Frankly the fact that he didn't even mention this obvious flaw makes me question his credentials, that and the fact that he doesn't seem to have proven a single one of his claims, despite the fact that they should be easily provable.

I gave plenty of links throughout the thread and information to companies where other sources of information can be researched.

As to your Kickstarter comment, you may want to go back and look at the chart I posted. That was Kickstarter numbers for TABLETOP AND MINIATURES GAMES or VIDEO GAMES only. They are both distinctly separated in the charts. It does not include other things like the art projects, or consumer goods. Also, you may want to read the Kickstarter blog. The last two years running they have called the "Year of the Game" because it is the number one category for funded projects of all categories. So, yes, Kickstarter is growing - but the number one thing contributing to their growth is GAMES, thus games are growing as so is Kickstarter along with it.

Also, your debate makes no sense. How can you use the example of 300% rise in paperback books and lead to a conclusion that you store is more popular but not paperback books? Your store is more popular BECAUSE of the rise in paperback books. There is no "obvious flaw" in what was posted but more in your interpretation of that data.

Lastly, you are making the classic mistake of looking at one datapoint in isolation. The market grew by 20% last year (links provided previously). Kickstarter also had tremendous grow in tabletop games. Observations or claims have been make of many other companies - Warlord Games, Privateer Press, FFG (who claims double digit growth every year for the last five years), Wyrd Miniatures, Hawk Wargaming, Battlefront, Corvus Belli, et al. All of these things support the claims that the market is growing - even in tabletop wargaming. You read the thread, but did you also read the various links and off site information provided in the thread? There were plenty of links provided for the "proof of the claims". Where I couldn't provide the information because it is from paid market research services, I listed who those companies were.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Herzlos wrote:
Yeah you'd think that they'd have noticed that for pretty much every specialist game they dropped, someone else has produced a successful equivalent (apart from WHQ, Manowar and Space Hulk), and that they'd want to do something about it.

Although one could argue that Descent kind of filled the role for Warhammer Quest, Level 7 from PP filled in for Space Hulk, and Dystopian Wars filled in for Man 'O War.

So I think the market just about covered every hole that GW gave them...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Jehan-reznor wrote:
I would be nice if GW would Follow their competitors, "Hey, X-wing the space battle miniature game is doing well, didn't we kill a similar like this a few years ago?"

I am still pissed that FFG dumped Dust Tactics!

And Hawk Wargaming has now announced that Andy Chambers is working on a space battle game for them that is already in the playtesting phase. Nothing like really taking it to GW over Battlefleet Gothic now, huh?

 Wayshuba wrote:

Lastly, you are making the classic mistake of looking at one datapoint in isolation. The market grew by 20% last year (links provided previously). Kickstarter also had tremendous grow in tabletop games. Observations or claims have been make of many other companies - Warlord Games, Privateer Press, FFG (who claims double digit growth every year for the last five years), Wyrd Miniatures, Hawk Wargaming, Battlefront, Corvus Belli, et al. All of these things support the claims that the market is growing - even in tabletop wargaming. You read the thread, but did you also read the various links and off site information provided in the thread? There were plenty of links provided for the "proof of the claims". Where I couldn't provide the information because it is from paid market research services, I listed who those companies were.

The problem is that you ignore basic maths - all the companies you listed are quite small compared to GW, so it is obvious that GW still holds a lion's share of the market. Since GW has been pretty stale last couple of years, all of the 20% annual growth of the market must have come from other companies - however, those companies would have to post truly enormous growth numbers to drag the ENTIRE market to 20% annual growth, since they have to make up GW's non-growth! This is the point which you have been completely ignoring. We are not talking about 5%, or 10% (enough to qualify for 'double digit') annual growth here, it would be wholly inadequate. Also, your statements tend to have intellectual fallacies - you cite FFG's big annual growth as an evidence for your case, however only smart part of FFG's catalogue is tabletop wargames!

Now, if you had cited that non-GW segment of the market had grown 20% annually, I could well believe that - at least when it comes to US. However, you stubbornly continue to maintain that it is entire market, and that's where your proof fails.

You accuse Wayshuba of ignoring basic maths, then make an assumption that the rest of the market cannot possibly have grown enough to inflate the whole sector 20% including GW?

With not a number or fact to support your spurious, plucked from the air, "think?"

The assumption that GW's piece of the pie was a majority of the pie. An assumption that a lot of people make - especially when they come from GW-centric backgrounds.

While few will argue that GW did not (and still do) have the largest portion of the tabletop miniature market - they have never controlled a majority of it. Without even getting into the 1 and 2 man shops that make up the majority of the miniature companies, you have about a dozen companies which clear in the $5-10 million range and two or three that are above that. Together they make up a market that is a match for GW's share. Following them, you have a couple dozen companies that make between $500K to $1 million in annual sales. Some of these are still pretty small companies (the entire staff could ride to work in a VW Golf) - but there are a lot of them - a lot. Finally you have the one man shows. The majority of these are under $200K a year, but you are talking about dozens even hundreds (honestly hard to keep up with just how many there are).

A few years back (2009ish), I had used what I knew from different manufacturers to sort of come to a rough guess of how much of a market share GW controlled. At the time it was around 25-30%. I would guess that now they are probably down around 15%. They still have the largest share of the market - but there are a lot more companies who are taking bigger and bigger pieces of it each year.*

One other thing to take note of on this grand argument is that companies like FFG and PP both have export agreements (of sorts) which take a bigger chunk of their total take than a regular distribution agreement. Where a regular distributor might get 50% of retail, an export/import agreement or overseas manufacturer (as PP uses a casting company in the UK for the UK/EU markets) will get the products at something closer to 33%. This allows them to cover the hassles of shipping, import fees, local manufacturing, packaging and all the rest.

Again, not a lot of hard numbers but what I have gathered is that recent growth for both of those companies has been in the 10-15% range for their miniature games in the US. Overseas it has actually been higher, however because of the lower return - they have not been getting as much real growth out of it.

Other companies like Wyrd and Corvus Belli are growing faster in real terms. Wyrd has been helped along with its smaller game sizes and transition to plastic, while Corvus Belli has been greatly helped by ease of import to the US market. Historical games, especially WWII based ones are still growing strong. Both Flames of War and Bolt Action have helped to pull their parent companies up in the financial ranks. Growth for those have helped to increase growth for secondary manufacturers like Artizan Designs, West Wind, Brigade and others.

You see the same things happening with other historical companies with the extra attention they are getting because of Perry Miniatures, and different past GW employees like Andy Chambers moving on to work with companies who create historical games and miniatures.

It goes beyond just those companies as well. I had a chance to talk with the DML rep last fall. Dragon is having a hard time keeping up with the demand for 1/72 scale models right now (used by both 20mm and 15mm gamers primarily). They have had to add two more production machines just to keep up with them. Tamiya is in the same boat and has actually been wearing out molds for their 1/48 scale models.

So far this year, three different companies I know have actually had to shut down because of this. Not because of lack of sales - but because of too much. The demand has far outstripped their ability to produce and as opposed to getting the angry messages regarding a 4-6 week lead time for miniatures, they had to decide between keeping their day jobs (401Ks, insurance, vacation pay...) or making their miniature company their full time job.

* Just to sort of give you an idea of it (mind you - this is just for illustrative purposes...you have to dig deeper to get a deeper meaning - and I don't have time to draw a picture right now) there are currently 2468 manufacturers listed in the TMP manufacturers directory:

http://theminiaturespage.com/man/

GW sold $226,081,474 last year worth of stuff. Each of those companies would only need to sell less than $100K worth of stuff to equal GW. That might sound like a lot - but considering that that would only put their take home (after costs) at less than $50K for pure retail and somewhere around $30K per year for distributed sales...that is nothing. Throw in a few companies who are making $1 million plus - and GW's share starts to shrink really fast.

So yes, if GW actually had a significant share of the market - it would take thousands of companies growing at double digit levels to raise them up. We actually do have thousands of companies - but more to the point, GW doesn't really control a significant share of the market. Sure, they do have the largest slice of the pie - but they still only have a small slice of the pie...not half of it to where you would actually need thousands of companies growing at double digits to raise the overall market that much.

Regarding discounting Kickstarter as a valid dataset to the discussion...in order to do so, the growth in tabletop games would need to be the same or lower than the overall growth of Kickstarter. KS grew at roughly 50% from 2012 to 2013. The tabletop game category almost tripled (might have tripled - don't have the actual numbers in front of me). Their growth far outstripped growth of KS alone, enough to almost ensure that growth on KS represents real market growth as opposed to only being an artifact of increased adoption of crowd funding in general. Yes, a lot of them are board games - however a lot of them are straight miniatures/wargame related as well. They are all growing, above and beyond the rate of KS alone.

Finally a word (again) regarding ICv2 and their methodology. Yes, it is not based on hard sales figures (largely - they do have access to the largest distributor in the US)...but that is still how a lot of sales data is collected. It is rare to actually have the ability to see real units sold. You don't know how many boxes are on shelves, in warehouses or otherwise not moving. If you look at a single source (Amazon for example) you can get real numbers - but that doesn't often exist. It seems that most people are pointing back toward mikhalia saying he doesn't like the way they tabulate their data, but then missing the bit where he goes on to say that his data isn't too far removed from the ICv2 data:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/390/575487.page#6492680

1. 40k
2. Warmahordes
3. Flames of War
4. WFB

And from ICv2 for that period:

1. Warhammer 40k Games Workshop
2. Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures Fantasy Flight Games
3. Warmachine Privateer Press
4. Warhammer Fantasy Games Workshop
5. Hordes Privateer Press

Although they do not mirror each other - they do have significant similarities. Each local store will have different games that are popular at different times, and while he doesn't have X-Wing listed (not sure...he might not even stock it) it could be popular at a different store in the Philly area.

He is correct though in saying that it isn't a hard set of numbers. There is no indication of how much (or how little) each game is more or less popular than the next game. It also does not take into account GWs direct sales (either through their website or through their retail stores). It does however take into account stores that have trade accounts with GW (as most stores will order directly with GW unless they move so little GW product that they just throw it on with their weekly Alliance order).

We also do have data which we can use to assign points with. We know roughly how much WFB GW sells in the US at various points in time. We know roughly how much GW sells through third parties, their webstore and through GW retail at various points in time. These allow us to say that sales of these games are probably above a certain point and below a different point. We can then backtrack through the numbers to determine approximations of total sales and correlate those with other numbers from other sources (confidential sources, news interviews, convention presentations, corporate filings...).

While the list on its own is really no more or less than a popularity contest - the list combined with other bits of information does allow you to make inferences to the overall market and come to the conclusion that while the market is growing - GW is not.

Anyway, if I have a chance before this thread dies off - I may go ahead and rerun numbers with more recent data points. Until then, I would recommend looking more broadly if you are interested in these sorts of things. Local news fluff pieces, governmental tax filings and other bits can help to put things into perspective.
___________________________

Should also add this (though it may not influence our Finish compatriot) - in the US especially, I hear more and more dissatisfaction every time I talk to anyone who is involved in the gaming industry with GW. The number of direct only products, digital only books and other items makes selling GW products a loosing proposition in many cases. When more than half of the sales for a given army need to take place outside of their store, arranging for game nights and local tournaments no longer appeals to them. To some extent it is psychological (but that still matters) as they still may sell $150-200 worth of GW stuff to a customer for a new army - but many of them have dropped it from their official rotation of games and now it is only played as pickup games while other games like Infinity and Warmachine are getting the official support.

I would expect this latest money grab to do pretty well for GW, and the direct digital sales influx to help as well when the numbers come out in a few months - but then I expect a significant drop off in this market as games become fewer and further apart for introducing new players (old players not normally needing store support - and tournaments...well, they will have their own issues to deal with with a few dozen different digital releases to figure out what is will be allowed and what isn't).

Here, GW sells the majority of their product through independent retailers (almost 2 to 1). If they continue to annoy retailers, they will see that support dropped even further.

I'd just like to throw this out there to support Sean's point:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=channel%3A534eb467-0-2751-8ea8-1a11391684&feature=iv&src_vid=83o-2p0VSdA&v=5NmfMSA0NDs

There are literally THOUSANDS of gamers who have shown up there, it is a 50 minute long video as they just walk around looking at tables and what people are playing and there is no sign of GW, PP, Corvus Belli, Spartan games or Fantasy Flight games.



*Also it's just an awesome video
**Edit: I tell a lie, they did spend a couple of minutes talking dystopian wars.

 Sean_OBrien wrote:
...snip...

Thank you.

Thanks Sean. On the numbers for PP, surprised to hear the 10 - 15% growth. You stated their 2010 numbers were $15 million and the numbers being tossed around this thread range from $15 to 17 million for 2013. Is that growth number retail sales and possibly not revenue? Given what you said about only getting a third of European sales back in revenue, they many not be reaping the rewards of the games popularity.

On ICv2, mikhalia sales missing a major seller and showing another that may or may not be close on that chart can show how the data can be misleading. Flames of War has faded from the shelves in my area and is seen as a dead game. His point was that the some of the surveying is pulled from random stores. Say a couple stores with sales rankings like mikhalia's were included, that could have swung the rankings wildly. That Cards Against Humanity is #5 on the Fall 2013 card/dice list shows that the Alliance numbers might not factor in as much as you think. The game only sells through Amazon, so those sales were resales.

Though one thing on the kickstarter numbers, a lot of those numbers are driven by people succumbing to hype and marketing. How much of that money is tied up in development limbo and products might not see the light of day for a couple more years. There is about $2.1 million of that money tied up in two very much discussed threads in the Misc Games section right now. Yes it is not money going to GW, but is it going to anything better? I know I'm regretting throwing money at the Sedition Wars KS.

Still this is mainly a thread about FFG, and I will say FFG is for the most part doing everything right at this moment. They have excellent games and push and support their games. I am looking forward to what they have to show at Gencon this year.

 agnosto wrote:
Did someone in this thread actually say X wing would kill GW?

To be honest, X-Wing HAS killed GW for me. I've had much more fun playing X-Wing than I ever had playing 40k. In fact I haven't played a game of 40k since X-Wing came on the scene due to the fact that, in the time you can play 1 game of 40k, I can easily get in 2-3 games of X-Wing.

 Sean_OBrien wrote:
The assumption that GW's piece of the pie was a majority of the pie. An assumption that a lot of people make - especially when they come from GW-centric backgrounds.

Oh, I've made no such assumption as I really do not know how big the pie is. I only made examples meant to be illustrative.
On scifi/fantasy-wargames, GW appears to hold more than 50% of the market share, based on that its five biggest competitors don't make up even half of GW's revenue. However, I have no idea how big the historicals market is, it is substantial, there is no single huge corporate but there are many small/medium sized companies, plus model kit companies who manufacture miniatures etc. (However at that point line between miniature manufacturer and wargame manufacturer becomes bit fuzzy. I bought plenty of Airfix figures when I was a kid, but never used them in any kind of game. )

One can assume GW's market share to be smaller, in that case relative growth from other companies required to achieve claimed overall growth becomes much smaller. However, required ABSOLUTE growth becomes much larger.

 Sean_OBrien wrote:

* Just to sort of give you an idea of it (mind you - this is just for illustrative purposes...you have to dig deeper to get a deeper meaning - and I don't have time to draw a picture right now) there are currently 2468 manufacturers listed in the TMP manufacturers directory:

http://theminiaturespage.com/man/

GW sold $226,081,474 last year worth of stuff. Each of those companies would only need to sell less than $100K worth of stuff to equal GW. That might sound like a lot - but considering that that would only put their take home (after costs) at less than $50K for pure retail and somewhere around $30K per year for distributed sales...that is nothing. Throw in a few companies who are making $1 million plus - and GW's share starts to shrink really fast.

Actually many of those seem to have zero sales, since the listing includes many defunct companies, and multiple entries as companies have changed names. Random sample of around 10 entries produced 7 which were defunct. This is not very convincing. OTOH maybe it's missing some newer companies, how often it is updated?

 Sean_OBrien wrote:

Regarding discounting Kickstarter as a valid dataset to the discussion...in order to do so, the growth in tabletop games would need to be the same or lower than the overall growth of Kickstarter. KS grew at roughly 50% from 2012 to 2013. The tabletop game category almost tripled (might have tripled - don't have the actual numbers in front of me). Their growth far outstripped growth of KS alone, enough to almost ensure that growth on KS represents real market growth as opposed to only being an artifact of increased adoption of crowd funding in general. Yes, a lot of them are board games - however a lot of them are straight miniatures/wargame related as well. They are all growing, above and beyond the rate of KS alone.

This logic doesn't hold water. By same logic, video game industry should be in a middle of an enormous boom, given how huge growth video game Kickstarters have enjoyed. Yet in reality, opposite is true: video game market is stale or in decline.

I do not think Kickstarter growth tells anything about the health of a business as such. Some mediums just suit better to crowd funding than others and KS is an exciting new thing. It will be interesting to see this years numbers, there has been talk about people having KS burnout, but does it translate to actual lack of growth?

 Sean_OBrien wrote:

Finally a word (again) regarding ICv2 and their methodology. Yes, it is not based on hard sales figures (largely - they do have access to the largest distributor in the US)...but that is still how a lot of sales data is collected. It is rare to actually have the ability to see real units sold. You don't know how many boxes are on shelves, in warehouses or otherwise not moving. If you look at a single source (Amazon for example) you can get real numbers - but that doesn't often exist. It seems that most people are pointing back toward mikhalia saying he doesn't like the way they tabulate their data, but then missing the bit where he goes on to say that his data isn't too far removed from the ICv2 data:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/390/575487.page#6492680

1. 40k
2. Warmahordes
3. Flames of War
4. WFB

And from ICv2 for that period:

1. Warhammer 40k Games Workshop
2. Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures Fantasy Flight Games
3. Warmachine Privateer Press
4. Warhammer Fantasy Games Workshop
5. Hordes Privateer Press

Although they do not mirror each other - they do have significant similarities. Each local store will have different games that are popular at different times, and while he doesn't have X-Wing listed (not sure...he might not even stock it) it could be popular at a different store in the Philly area.

He is correct though in saying that it isn't a hard set of numbers. There is no indication of how much (or how little) each game is more or less popular than the next game. It also does not take into account GWs direct sales (either through their website or through their retail stores). It does however take into account stores that have trade accounts with GW (as most stores will order directly with GW unless they move so little GW product that they just throw it on with their weekly Alliance order).

We also do have data which we can use to assign points with. We know roughly how much WFB GW sells in the US at various points in time. We know roughly how much GW sells through third parties, their webstore and through GW retail at various points in time. These allow us to say that sales of these games are probably above a certain point and below a different point. We can then backtrack through the numbers to determine approximations of total sales and correlate those with other numbers from other sources (confidential sources, news interviews, convention presentations, corporate filings...).

As I explained, ICv2 reported back in 2009 already that both WM and Hordes had overtaken WHFB in sales. After that, the chart positions vacillated somewhat until X-wing came along and pushed PP games down, and WHFB off the list completely last year.
Basically, if we're to believe ICv2, already in 2009 Privateer Press should have had TWICE the sales WHFB was making total, since both of their main games were ahead of WHFB. But if this was correct, WHFB's share of GW sales should have been absurdly small - around 5%. Now, Warhammer Fantasy sure was in decline back then already (and hasn't done well since either), but that is just blatantly absurd. In fact, in their 2007 listing, WHFB was completely off the list:

ICv2 Top Five Non-Collectible Miniature Games
1. Warhammer 40,000
2. Warmachine
3. Hordes
4. AT-43
5. BattleTech

Now ICv2 listings do not include any hard sales numbers, maybe five years ago 40k was leading by gigantic margin and it has shrunk since then and perhaps now it's ahead only by a hair's width, we don't know. However, if what you and Wayshuba claim is true - that the market is growing very strongly but GW is not - you would not expect this kind of listings. WHFB should have dropped off the lists years ago if the non-GW games had grown so much. Then X-wing comes out and outsells all other games except 40k. If the numbers cited for X-wing sales earlier in this thread is correct (no reason not to, it's well in line with FFG's other numbers) then it looks like #2 place on the list can be taken by a player with maybe $10 million annual revenue.

But this does not paint us a picture of a market which has been in strong growth for years and only GW being shrunk. If it has, you'd expect companies like PP to be much bigger than they appear to be currently, since they were already years ago outselling GW's second biggest franchise. In fact, it looks like PP has not made much of a headway for many years. I've not even heard of Star Trek Attack Wing. Apparently it is pretty popular, since it was #4 on the ICv2 list last year, outselling Hordes and WHFB. Historical games are curiously absent from ICv2 lists, are they included at all, or is the historical market just so fragmented that no individual games make the list?

 Sean_OBrien wrote:

While the list on its own is really no more or less than a popularity contest - the list combined with other bits of information does allow you to make inferences to the overall market and come to the conclusion that while the market is growing - GW is not.

Well in fact GW grew 22% between 2008 and 2013...

However the point was never that GW isn't making some daft business decisions, or that many other non-GW games are growing - to some extent, with GW's expense, especially when it comes to niches of games GW has discontinued from it's own catalogue.
The point was a specific claim that a wargames market has doubled over last 5 years, which to me seemed hilariously optimistic and not supported by my observations of general state of the hobby - and still isn't.

 silent25 wrote:
Thanks Sean. On the numbers for PP, surprised to hear the 10 - 15% growth. You stated their 2010 numbers were $15 million and the numbers being tossed around this thread range from $15 to 17 million for 2013. Is that growth number retail sales and possibly not revenue? Given what you said about only getting a third of European sales back in revenue, they many not be reaping the rewards of the games popularity.

Again, do you have any proof of these "$15 to 17 million for 2013"? Because the only person that I see constantly throwing that number around is actually you and without any evidence other than "I heard some guy that talked to some guy from PP in a con".

I find it extremely unlikely that a private company would discuss its finances in that much detail with anyone in such a public venue...

Backfire wrote:


This logic doesn't hold water. By same logic, video game industry should be in a middle of an enormous boom, given how huge growth video game Kickstarters have enjoyed. Yet in reality, opposite is true: video game market is stale or in decline.

I do not think Kickstarter growth tells anything about the health of a business as such. Some mediums just suit better to crowd funding than others and KS is an exciting new thing. It will be interesting to see this years numbers, there has been talk about people having KS burnout, but does it translate to actual lack of growth?

Sorry, my friend, your are arguing his logic doesn't hold water based on your own limited personal observations. Here is how absolutely wrong your personal observations are.



Appears the video game market was $66.3 billion in 2012, $70.4 billion in 2013 and is estimated at $75.2 billion in 2014.

Oh, and in case you somehow want to dismiss that one, here is another one from Microsoft published a little before the above data was.



The complete opposite of your claims and observations. Your debate would hold water if only it wasn't for the dang facts.

Backfire wrote:
The point was a specific claim that a wargames market has doubled over last 5 years, which to me seemed hilariously optimistic and not supported by my observations of general state of the hobby - and still isn't.

Here's the thing though, on one side there is the ICv2 guys (who's numbers aren't perfect by any means but are still the closest thing we have to real numbers freely avalible), the CEO of FFG, and most (all?) of GW's competition saying they are experiencing massive growth. And on the other side is your personal observations?

Further backed up by several independents/resellers, and the huge attendance rates of non-GW shows (Salute in London had over 2300 pre-sold tickets), the boom in new mini's companies and ranges coming out, and of indirectly related companies like kickstarter showing huge growth in the gaming section.

All the evidence points to a boom in tabletop gaming, except for GW, who may still be a large fish, don't appear to be dominating the market as much as we assume. Especially since they really only have 1 core came, one sort of core game and one essentially abandoned core game, and aren't catering to all sorts of demographics now.