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 loki old fart wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
If GW shut down tomorrow, we'd have an exciting and engaging fan made ruleset and a solidly balanced set of codexes by Easter.

If thats the case roll on GW's demise.
Because the rubbish GW's put out isn't balanced, exciting, or engaging.

The downside being that without a central, coherent source for new releases, we'd wouldn't have any new units. Not that it wouldn't still leave an enormous amount to work with, but entropy would ultimately kill it IMO, but there'd be plenty of fun to be had on the way!

 Azreal13 wrote:

 loki old fart wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
If GW shut down tomorrow, we'd have an exciting and engaging fan made ruleset and a solidly balanced set of codexes by Easter.

If thats the case roll on GW's demise.
Because the rubbish GW's put out isn't balanced, exciting, or engaging.

The downside being that without a central, coherent source for new releases, we'd wouldn't have any new units. Not that it wouldn't still leave an enormous amount to work with, but entropy would ultimately kill it IMO, but there'd be plenty of fun to be had on the way!

And it would finally be true to fluff...

Talys wrote:
Recast models are actually only a good value for $100+ pieces. On cheaper units, often the price difference is quite small, or, even cheaper to get legit models.

I don't know where you're looking, but that's really not accurate.

All the recasts I've seen are 40-60% of full retail whether it's a $40 tac squad or a $400 titan. I just can't see the point of buying a recast to save $15. When it saves $200, then I'm tempted.

 Surtur wrote:

Steelmage99 wrote:

frozenwastes wrote: If someone buys GW out, it'll be someone else.

After the recent Days of Wonder- Asmodee-Fantasy Flight Games merger, they could be a contender.

I'm actually not so sure about that. Ffg isn't really a miniature manufacturer. Even with xwing they don't really have a wargame target audience. Xwing is more of a board game style wargame than a true wargame in the traditional sense. I can't see them keeping the wargame in its present form. It would likely be shredded down to boardgames, the lcg and rpg

I dunno - FFG is already doing the GW RPGs, and they held Dust for a while as well. If they had the finances, I could see them picking 40K and Fantasy up. Though I imagine they'd retool many of the minis down the line (possibly as snap-fit kits) and you KNOW they'd rewrite the game to use their custom funky dice.

But I bet it'd be a hell of a lot better than the game that exists now.

The sky is falling! GW is making less profit then the year before!

Profit anything over 4% is luxury, as someone pointed out, his yearly avarage was 6% , plus current value of the stock. Do share holders wnt more then that? Of course!

At the current rate it's going to take a couple of years to go below that threshold and it has enough cash reserves to wether a few years of running a loss. And history has shown us that gw can do turnbouts if things get really bad. Were just not there yet, not even close, going to take another half a decade at this rate...

Honestly I think the whole LE thing is hurting GW more then it's helping. I wanted to order 34 Deathstorm boxed sets through a (web)store, sorry we won't even get that much, because your a really good customer we can give you four... Had to use multiple stores and addressess to get a total of 10 boxed sets. This issue has happened with Space Hulk, the army boxes, recent hardcovers, etc. Folks don't always have the cash on hand to buy at GW prices right away and sometimes want multiples, let customers buy when and how much they want.

Cergorach wrote:
And history has shown us that gw can do turnbouts if things get really bad.

They have?

There's been two occasions when they've been in trouble and turned things around, a management buyout and LotR.

They guy who did the former is still in charge, and the latter is now barely an afterthought in terms of sales.

I'm curious where you think the next turnabout is going to come from? Because it is far easier to read the situation as a group of people out of ideas throwing a lot of mud in the hope that some sticks.

Imagine if they got the game of thrones licence...

I'm pretty sure Kirby has expressed GW's desire to only concentrate on their own products in one of the reports.

Control freak GW doesn't like being told what to do by other people.

 Azreal13 wrote:
I'm pretty sure Kirby has expressed GW's desire to only concentrate on their own products in one of the reports.

Control freak GW doesn't like being told what to do by other people.

Interestingly enough - that was right after the first LotR drop...

As opposed to focusing on their own products - they subsequently took Specialist Games out back and shot them in the head (granted, by that time...they were already on life support anyway). They continued with LotR (granted, they didn't bother to feed and water the property for several years). Doubled down with the Hobbit (and doubled the prices). And now - release a $500 limited edition Smug the Dragon.

GW has shown that if anything, you can definitely take them at their word...

How has GW been able to turn things around? Their numbers were terrible so they rushed out a new edition and a bunch of big kits, slashed costs to the bone and released $50 supplements with 2 pages of rules and $150-250 limited edition codexes and the numbers are STILL trending down. Everything they've released lately, from dice to campaign boxes to a board game to a $500 dragon is "limited edition! Get it now before they're all gone". This is a sign of a company that
a) has no clue how to guage customer interest/product demand
b) is desperate for every possible sale, which means using sales tactics like that when they might end up selling less than they would if they just produced more of x item
c) is deathly afraid of getting stuck with unsold stock sitting on shelves and bankrupting themselves TSR style
d) is well aware of their precarious financial position

The writing is on the wall here. If this report comes out and revenue has increased but profit is down, then I will believe their exchange rate excuse but right now they sound like a parent being caught by their child putting presents under the tree on xmas eve. Anyone who believes a word of their preamble at this point is either naive or willfully ignorant.

Revenue also is affected by currency fluctuations.

The way to judge the effect of currency fluctuation is by comparing the sales in different territories year on year.

Interestingly, in last year's report, GW announced they were not going to report individual territory figures in future. That means that investors will not be able to judge for themselves the effect of currency fluctuations on revenue.

To my last point, market research is not 'otiose' in a niche market when nearly 12,000 of your customers sign a petition complaining about how much they don't like your company. When your revenue is in a steady decline, a significant portion of your customers are unhappy with your business and you rely solely on said customers to gain new ones, market research is not otiose, it should be your number one priority if you have any intention of trying to turn things around. You've been throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks and obviously it isn't working no matter how much you sugar coat terrible numbers with a rambling, barely coherent preamble full of ridiculous excuses.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Revenue also is affected by currency fluctuations.

The way to judge the effect of currency fluctuation is by comparing the sales in different territories year on year.

Interestingly, in last year's report, GW announced they were not going to report individual territory figures in future. That means that investors will not be able to judge for themselves the effect of currency fluctuations on revenue.

Well isn't that convenient. Now they can use the exchange rate excuse whenever it's applicable and we really have no way of telling whether it's a valid reason or just another excuse. "Our revenue/profit is down because of X. We have evidence of X but we aren't showing it to you, you'll just have to take our word for it."

 Toofast wrote:
Anyone who believes a word of their preamble at this point is either naive or willfully ignorant.

Most of their shareholders are companies not individuals from what I recall. They aren't interested in the peculiar preambles, they'll stay in until the dividends stop. The last share price drop came on the back of a refusal to pay dividends IIRC.. Once GW hit the point where they can't afford to pay them it, investors will place their money elsewhere.

I thought some years ago Kirby said words to the effect that their company wasn't affected by the global economy anyway, because they are a niche business. But now its all about the exchange rates.

That'll work because GW FineShares(tm) are the stock market, and their investors exist in a vacuum with no other sharholdings in their portfolio to compare such claims against.

 Toofast wrote:
To my last point, market research is not 'otiose' in a niche market when nearly 12,000 of your customers sign a petition complaining about how much they don't like your company. When your revenue is in a steady decline, a significant portion of your customers are unhappy with your business and you rely solely on said customers to gain new ones, market research is not otiose, it should be your number one priority if you have any intention of trying to turn things around. You've been throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks and obviously it isn't working no matter how much you sugar coat terrible numbers with a rambling, barely coherent preamble full of ridiculous excuses.

WHY are they still customers? All GW sees is 'customer' and doesn't care about the rest.

winterdyne wrote:
That'll work because GW FineShares(tm) are the stock market, and their investors exist in a vacuum with no other sharholdings in their portfolio to compare such claims against.

The FineShareholders™ are also price insensitive. They simply enjoy holding on to their FineShares™, they don't care about things like dividends, stock prices and the company's future prospects.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
Imagine if they got the game of thrones licence...

Definitely think there was an opportunity for that, and also the Star Wars license from when the Prequels came out years ago.

Regardless of what you think of those films, imagine some sci-fi form of LoTR that hooked in gamers in the same way. Think we would be seeing a very different picture now, that's for sure.

But, it's going to be FFG that reap the spoils of that license now.

 Azreal13 wrote:

The downside being that without a central, coherent source for new releases, we'd wouldn't have any new units. Not that it wouldn't still leave an enormous amount to work with, but entropy would ultimately kill it IMO, but there'd be plenty of fun to be had on the way!

It doesn't seem to be hurting Blood Bowl too much.

 Soteks Prophet wrote:

 Toofast wrote:
To my last point, market research is not 'otiose' in a niche market when nearly 12,000 of your customers sign a petition complaining about how much they don't like your company. When your revenue is in a steady decline, a significant portion of your customers are unhappy with your business and you rely solely on said customers to gain new ones, market research is not otiose, it should be your number one priority if you have any intention of trying to turn things around. You've been throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks and obviously it isn't working no matter how much you sugar coat terrible numbers with a rambling, barely coherent preamble full of ridiculous excuses.

WHY are they still customers? All GW sees is 'customer' and doesn't care about the rest.

May of them are ex but potential customers, or customers who may leave, or just aren't spending as much as they would. Sure some of them still buy, but 12,000 dissatisfied customers is a lot worse a prospect than 12,000 compliant customers. New customers cost something like 5x more to gain that it costs to retain existing customers.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:

 Toofast wrote:
Anyone who believes a word of their preamble at this point is either naive or willfully ignorant.

Most of their shareholders are companies not individuals from what I recall. They aren't interested in the peculiar preambles, they'll stay in until the dividends stop. The last share price drop came on the back of a refusal to pay dividends IIRC.. Once GW hit the point where they can't afford to pay them it, investors will place their money elsewhere.

I thought some years ago Kirby said words to the effect that their company wasn't affected by the global economy anyway, because they are a niche business. But now its all about the exchange rates.

The exchange rates thing is actually not as silly as it sounds, and should not be hard to validate. It works like this:

The USD price of a model does not change as GBP fluctuates. So, if GBP goes up, the sale price of export units actually drops (since the customer or store pays in USD). That is, the $100 might have been 50GBP at one point, but 45GBP later. This is easy to validate if GW releases unit volumes; and easy to deduce if they provide regional sales figures.

If, in 2014, GW sold as much or more stuff as 2013, but made less money on it because USD dropped in value relative to GBP, this is not an issue for GW (because they aren't cash-strapped or highly leveraged). Remember, the pendulum could swing the other way. If GBP becomes very weak relative to USD, increased profits maybnot mean the company is actually performing better, at least in the sales volume metric.

 Toofast wrote:

Ebay has been around a LONG time now, and for as long as I can remember there have been GW products on ebay. However, there are some people (like me) who will always prefer NIB so they don't have to fix the mistakes of other people. My time is worth something, and if I have to strip, clean mold lines and re base 10 models to save $10-15, it just isn't worth it. Also, some people enjoy building models and don't want to buy things that have already been built. The problem is as GW continues to raise prices and make people quit because of their terrible rules, even people like me will eventually turn to ebay and the second hand market in general. Whether it will be enough to really affect their sales is up for debate. GW didn't have a problem selling stuff 10 years ago and there were just as many armies on ebay then as there are now.

Yes, you are correct on all counts. There are a lot of people who like NIB stuff and it is usually not worth it to save $15 by buying someone else's models.

But things can change when the cost difference becomes larger. When you can pay around $200 for miniatures that would cost around $1,000 new, that might mean you are willing to deal with stripping models and cleaning mold lines. Well, not you in particular, but some people. The cost difference is not always that huge, but there are times it gets to that point.

It's not limited to used models, either. I would bet that you would take a 20% discount to get new models from the Warstore, which demonstrates what I am saying - people will normally seek ways of getting the most while spending the least.

This is the secondary market, and, like you pointed out, it has been around a long time. The secondary market itself will never kill the primary market (actually, it depends on it), but it does compete with the primary market on the sale of models for GW games. Every time someone chooses to buy something in the secondary market instead of the primary market, it hurts GW's revenue because they will not get that sale back in the future. This is something GW is very aware of, and you can see how they deal with it by the policies they enforce on the web and with FLGSes. The secondary market is the reason they have restrictions on where their high quality photos can be used, on what independent retailers can sell online, and on what models other retailers are actually allowed to sell. The company does not want to compete with itself, so they create restrictions on the use and placement of their marketing materials. They want to earn more on the things they sell, so they only sell some models through their fancy new webstore.

My original point was that costs on the secondary market may sometimes be driven by people's attitudes and perceptions on the quality of new Codexes. I am not trying to prove this point conclusively, but I did share the observation that there were a lot of Ork armies available on eBay and places like Dakka around the time the new Codex was released. I was able to purchase smaller Ork armies for a cost of around $2 a model, which is very low (about 13%) compared to what these models would have cost new. It lead me to buy a few new models as well (through eBay, at a discount), but the overall cost was about 20% of what I would have spent to buy an entirely new army.

What I am really wondering is whether GW is sabotaging the primary market by selling Codexes with poor rulesets. I find this to be a simpler way to explain the decline in profitability than the currency fluctuations the company described in their latest financial reports. GW had a lot of new releases over the last year, so they should be enjoying increased overall sales to account for the volatility of international monetary policy. Anyone who regularly reads financial reports is probably wondering about this too.

To take this a little further, I am not that different than you and can relate to everything you said. Much of my enjoyment of the hobby comes from painting and I always like getting new models.

But the economics of the hobby are constantly changing and the pace of change accelerated dramatically in the last few years. My experiences with GW date back to the 80s. I remember when it was possible to go into a GW store, plop down a few hundred dollars, and come out with everything you need to build an entire army (including paints). It was very common for players to have multiple armies, and I can think of a lot of people who would start a new one every year.

These days, the fact that models cost more makes it less affordable for most people to buy an entire army all in one blast. Someone might be able to get a HQ and a couple squads for a few hundred dollars, but it could take years and cost thousands of dollars to be able to afford a satisfyingly large force. This might not apply to you in particular, but most people, even impulse buyers, are going to put more thought into purchases of that amount. This is especially true for people that have already spent money on their first army and feel bad rulesets are limiting their enjoyment of the game. They are going to do a little research online to understand what they are getting themselves into precisely because they want to enjoy the game, and because they fear being stuck with an expensive mistake.

I can see this happening in my FLGS, where kids will come in with lists they printed off the net and ask someone to help them order all the parts. They usually can't afford half of what they seek and sometimes go away without buying anything. Often, the armies they are looking to buy are Tau or Eldar, and there's a good chance they already own a Space Marine army. I see a lot of other things going on too, which I don't really want to get into now.

There's this other point related to decline in profits that I am still working up to. GW may losing consumers looking to own multiple armies to the secondary market. When GW releases a new model, I think it's important for them to sell more than just that model. To be successful, they have to drive people's interest in making a bigger step and starting a new army. This is why new models and new Codexes tend to come out at the same time.

The evidence this is not happening is in the financials. Given the number of new releases this year, why are we not seeing increased profits based on more people starting new armies? If GW is not executing on this part of their sales plan, what does that mean for the secondary market? I would love to hear from people who own FLGSes that offer discounts and what kinds of sales they saw when new Codexes were released.

Quality is a nebulous term though, and includes other nebulous terms such as competitiveness within the meta, if its fluffy, fun builds, reuse of existing model particularly if its models that didn't work in the previous codex, and new models. Everybody has differing preferences for those categories and the overall mix for them.

GW should operate a similar model to MtG for each new codex: release a counter to last high powered thing and new high powered thing in next release, repeat. Both should be based on new models and the models should combine good rules and an attractive model at the right price. The Knights were like this, they sold a ton on launch, but they failed to capitalise on this by not having enough variety in the codex and by not launching supplements for them quick enough.

Too often GW release a cool looking model with rubbish rules or a rubbish looking model with good rules, rarely do they get both right. If they could do one thing it would be to improve the ratio of hits to misses.

 Looky Likey wrote:
Quality is a nebulous term though, and includes other nebulous terms such as competitiveness within the meta, if its fluffy, fun builds, reuse of existing model particularly if its models that didn't work in the previous codex, and new models. Everybody has differing preferences for those categories and the overall mix for them.

GW should operate a similar model to MtG for each new codex: release a counter to last high powered thing and new high powered thing in next release, repeat. Both should be based on new models and the models should combine good rules and an attractive model at the right price. The Knights were like this, they sold a ton on launch, but they failed to capitalise on this by not having enough variety in the codex and by not launching supplements for them quick enough.

Too often GW release a cool looking model with rubbish rules or a rubbish looking model with good rules, rarely do they get both right. If they could do one thing it would be to improve the ratio of hits to misses.

Well, I am starting to realize quality is a polarizing term, and I really only used it for the sake of convenience. Maybe a better way to talk about quality is to say people's perceptions of the rules contained the Codex are the driving factor here. You are absolutely right to say quality means different things to different people, but the term really only matters a) as the rules relate to someone's enjoyment of the game and b) as the rules impact what GW is able to sell.

But seriously, how do you explain spending $1,000 on a game and selling off your purchases for 20% of the original value? Tell me how the value of a model depreciates by 80% over the course of 5 years when the identical model has gone up in retail value? The common logic around selling used miniatures is that they are worth around 50% of what they originally cost, there has to be some explanation for this happening. Sure, some people make bad deals, but I was seeing a lot of them. If people were really satisfied with their armies, I would have expected to be seeing a range of prices that averaged out to something much closer to 50%.

I don't really think it would be productive to try and chart data about cost per model on eBay relative to Codex release dates, because that only describes the secondary market while GW is only focused on the primary. The only evidence that matters is the company's financial performance in the primary market, which is what we get from GW's financial reports. Secondary markets can be driven by a lot of factors that are difficult to track, but this time it looked like people rage quitting after a long period of frustration. I think people were expecting something better in the new Codex release, whatever you want to call it, and gave up when they didn't get it.

With regards to your points about how GW's sales philosophy should be adapted to game theory, I disagree that this is a good approach precisely because we have already seen them do power escalation releases with Tau and Eldar. This has been happening at the army-wide level and it drove purchases for those armies without benefitting the GW product line as a whole. Again, GW makes it's money from people buying armies, not individual models, and their production cycles are too long for them to be constantly tweaking the product lines. What you suggest would represent a radical change to their production process, which, like you said, really only seems to suffer from the fact they can't seem to get the coolness of the rules and the models aligned at the right time. There's ways to solve that without changing the sales process.

There's clearly a complex problem here. I would be surprised if there was a simple solution. I suspect the only real solutions are for GW to be focused more on the secondary market. They have done everything they can with independent resellers short of terminating their relationships, yet there's still an avenue to severely cutting the cost to get a new army. FWIW, I am completely satisfied with the Ork miniatures I was able to buy, they were assembled properly, painted to a high tabletop standard, and clearly well cared for.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
This is all making me think how much I used to love going into a GW store, looking through all the blisters, and buying something just because I thought it looked cool. That would sometimes lead to me starting an army.

Anyone remember those days? Still do it?

 Azreal13 wrote:

Cergorach wrote:
And history has shown us that gw can do turnbouts if things get really bad.

They have?

There's been two occasions when they've been in trouble and turned things around, a management buyout and LotR.

They guy who did the former is still in charge, and the latter is now barely an afterthought in terms of sales.

I'm curious where you think the next turnabout is going to come from? Because it is far easier to read the situation as a group of people out of ideas throwing a lot of mud in the hope that some sticks.

Have you even read the financial reports from the last decade?
No one knows for sure how ell gw was doing before the management buyout, that information isn't public.
The lotr deal was made when gw was still growing every year and making a profit. During the lotr period revenue and profit actually stopped growing, many attributed that to gws focus on lotr instead of their own properties. The lotr deal only started gaining ground after the deagostini release of the weekly magazine nad miniatures.

Things turned around for gw after major cost cutting initiatives and Assault on Black Reach.

Are you just spewing? Or trolling? Because what your saying has no basis in reality, aka. The numbers that are publicly available.

I don't like a ton of what gw has been doing the last couple of years. Higher prices stopped me from buying most gw products, unless of course it' a very good deal like these starter and campaign boxes. Bought a bunch of da veteran sprues to get the two limited sm captains. Before that a couple of boxes of csm jump troops for conversion purposes. The rest was all very good deals through second hand market. If i compare those purchases to 5-7 years ago... A drop in the bucket... The only rulebook i bought are the small rulebooks i got with the starter sets... My last bought codex armybook is from before they went hardcover, before that i own them all. I'm a 40k and wfb fan, i stopped being a gw fan something like 15-20 years ago. That doesn't mean i'm blind with either love or hate for gw, like some folks here seem tobe...

Ps. Typing this on an ipad creates a lot of typing mistakes, sorry!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
@techsoldaten:
If you can consistently get 80% off on the secondary market for 5 year old products, we would all still be playing 5E.

But my experience is that you don't even get close to that discount even on the horribly assembled and painted minis, certainly not from 5 years ago. The only experience I ever got with a 80% discount on GW minis is buying up all the GW inventory from a store that was cleaning up it's inventory drastically and someone that dumped everything GW related in a big box and wanted €50 for it, eventually I restored €250 worth of product from the box. I consider a very good deal 2/3 off, usually it's badly painted, sometimes badly constructed, and often comes with a lot of minis I don't want. I usually see 50% off on mediocre paint jobs and halfass assemblies. This while I can get 20% off from a webstore and a army box gets it then down to 40% off (NIB). So I'm not paying 50% off for minis I have to strip and repair. Not even touching the startersets, Space Hulk and the new campaign sets (stormclaw and deathstorm yet). Take what I want, sell the rest.

The only painted/assembled minis I won't strip come from one guy that was selling his Warmachine Cygnar, Hordes Trollbloods, and LotR. Awesome paint jobs, professional assembly and a very good price (about 2/3 off msrp). Those kinds of deals are rare and far between.

I generally sell complete kits (unpainted) still on sprue for 40% off MSRP. Unpainted kits with bits missing 50% off MSRP. The Terminators from the deathstorm set 60% off. etc. I'm limited to what was available at a good discount (which army boxes are in stock), what I bought (aka. what I want/need), and how much demand there is for them... Same with 2nd hand items I want to buy at a decent discount.

As a side note, stuff from retailers generally comes with free shipping if you buy x amount, not so with second hand items. Shipping has become quite expensive, thus making 2nd hand items even more unattractive.

 techsoldaten wrote:
Well, I am starting to realize quality is a polarizing term, and I really only used it for the sake of convenience. Maybe a better way to talk about quality is to say people's perceptions of the rules contained the Codex are the driving factor here. You are absolutely right to say quality means different things to different people, but the term really only matters a) as the rules relate to someone's enjoyment of the game and b) as the rules impact what GW is able to sell.

But seriously, how do you explain spending $1,000 on a game and selling off your purchases for 20% of the original value? Tell me how the value of a model depreciates by 80% over the course of 5 years when the identical model has gone up in retail value? The common logic around selling used miniatures is that they are worth around 50% of what they originally cost, there has to be some explanation for this happening. Sure, some people make bad deals, but I was seeing a lot of them. If people were really satisfied with their armies, I would have expected to be seeing a range of prices that averaged out to something much closer to 50%.

I don't really think it would be productive to try and chart data about cost per model on eBay relative to Codex release dates, because that only describes the secondary market while GW is only focused on the primary. The only evidence that matters is the company's financial performance in the primary market, which is what we get from GW's financial reports. Secondary markets can be driven by a lot of factors that are difficult to track, but this time it looked like people rage quitting after a long period of frustration. I think people were expecting something better in the new Codex release, whatever you want to call it, and gave up when they didn't get it.

With regards to your points about how GW's sales philosophy should be adapted to game theory, I disagree that this is a good approach precisely because we have already seen them do power escalation releases with Tau and Eldar. This has been happening at the army-wide level and it drove purchases for those armies without benefitting the GW product line as a whole. Again, GW makes it's money from people buying armies, not individual models, and their production cycles are too long for them to be constantly tweaking the product lines. What you suggest would represent a radical change to their production process, which, like you said, really only seems to suffer from the fact they can't seem to get the coolness of the rules and the models aligned at the right time. There's ways to solve that without changing the sales process.

There's clearly a complex problem here. I would be surprised if there was a simple solution. I suspect the only real solutions are for GW to be focused more on the secondary market. They have done everything they can with independent resellers short of terminating their relationships, yet there's still an avenue to severely cutting the cost to get a new army. FWIW, I am completely satisfied with the Ork miniatures I was able to buy, they were assembled properly, painted to a high tabletop standard, and clearly well cared for.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
This is all making me think how much I used to love going into a GW store, looking through all the blisters, and buying something just because I thought it looked cool. That would sometimes lead to me starting an army.

Anyone remember those days? Still do it?

Your argument has the second hand market as a disease infecting GW's profit , shutting down the second hand market (which would never be possible as the second hand market is more like the common cold) would be curing the disease, I would rather they immunise against the disease. This immunisation would be through improving retention, if they can keep vets enthused and preferably buying new product to use along side old product then that should reduce the volume on sale, which in turn would drive up second hand prices due to lower supply.

My point was that by releasing better quality product vets are more likely to expand their army with the latest release as it compliments and extends the army's current capabilities.

 Looky Likey wrote:
Your argument has the second hand market as a disease infecting GW's profit , shutting down the second hand market (which would never be possible as the second hand market is more like the common cold) would be curing the disease, I would rather they immunise against the disease. This immunisation would be through improving retention, if they can keep vets enthused and preferably buying new product to use along side old product then that should reduce the volume on sale, which in turn would drive up second hand prices due to lower supply.

My point was that by releasing better quality product vets are more likely to expand their army with the latest release as it compliments and extends the army's current capabilities.

I see where you are going, but that's really overstating the point.

GW already does a lot to keep the secondhand market suppressed with a) their policies about usage of their images and b) their policies for independent retailers around sales volume, web marketing and availability of miniatures.

When you talk about "immunizing" vets, that would be through the release of new Codexes, right? Wouldn't it seem strange to you if vets were selling off their armies very cheap when new Codexes came out? It might make someone think there's a problem here...

loki old fart wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
If GW shut down tomorrow, we'd have an exciting and engaging fan made ruleset and a solidly balanced set of codexes by Easter.

If thats the case roll on GW's demise.
Because the rubbish GW's put out isn't balanced, exciting, or engaging.

On that note, it's my opinion that if GW tanked and 40K was put on the same playing field as other, better, possibly compatible rulesets that are 'dead', free or cheap, that'll kill it all the sooner. GW's conditioning and market presence are already starting to fail; when they're completely gone I can't see many good reasons for anyone to consciously choose 40K for theiir sci-fi gaming.

Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:Imagine if they got the game of thrones licence...

Let's not. Their muckups of Peter Jackson's muckups were painful enough. Don't repeat it with HBO's muckups.

(NEW! The Citadel Game of Thrones Petyr Baelish's 'establishment' comes with fifteen highly detailed plastic whores! Relive the awkwardness of the hit TV series as they sit in the middle of your gaming table and stick out like a sore thumb while the real story unfolds! All for just seventy... No eighty Kirby-Kwids!)

Soteks Prophet wrote:
WHY are they still customers? All GW sees is 'customer' and doesn't care about the rest.

I signed it. I've bought so little and so irregularly from GW the past few years, you could go ahead and call me an ex-customer. I do.

Cergorach wrote:
Things turned around for gw after major cost cutting initiatives and Assault on Black Reach.

But they didn't actually "turn around." They stayed largely static, if you seriously analyze the data.

Prior to the last two years, profits had been largely static for years beforehand. This static profit was despite the cost-cutting and price increases. The only way that can happen is if unit sales have dropped.

I'm not sure how you categorize that as having "turned around" their situation.

Saldiven wrote:

Cergorach wrote:
Things turned around for gw after major cost cutting initiatives and Assault on Black Reach.

But they didn't actually "turn around." They stayed largely static, if you seriously analyze the data.

Prior to the last two years, profits had been largely static for years beforehand. This static profit was despite the cost-cutting and price increases. The only way that can happen is if unit sales have dropped.

I'm not sure how you categorize that as having "turned around" their situation.

To be fair, he might have been referring to the share price, which did recover to a degree after they started down their current path, mainly because it seems the investors don't give a flying fig about the company in the long term as long as it stays just healthy enough in the right-now to keep pumping out dividends.

I'm not buying at these prices until they fix the rules.