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 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
GW is (starting) to do a lot of the things the internet was asking for

1) speeding up releases; well it had been asked for again and again, but now they are actually doing it people are saying it's too fast, they can't keep up/understand all the new rules/meta etc

You're conflating multiple issues. People wanted certain armies to be updated more frequently, because they were suffering compared to those that were updated often. People are complaining about not being able to keep up because GW have been releasing dataslates and scenarios and supplements and limited-edition campaign books, in many cases by stripping content out of codexes to be sold back at a premium, so often and with so little regard for people's ability to actually acquire them(they go OOP, or are Apple-device exclusive etc) that it's actually become a chore to follow what's available, where to get it from, and how it slots into the core game.

2) Move things on: The fantasy End Times stuff is making major changes to that world, this is going down pretty well, and hopefully it will stick (finding out it is all a 'dream' and 9th returns to the status quo will be a big disappointment)

Some people asked for things to be moved on. Some people are happy with the major changes of the End Times. Plenty of us were happy with the idea of WHF and 40K as settings rather than stories, and End Times has put me off Fantasy completely. If I were religious I'd be praying for another bout of collective amnesia in the design studio, them pulling a Storm of Chaos 2: Storm Harder is about the only thing that would draw me back in.

3) stop the annual price increases, well they did that and people are now complaining about specific price increases...

Yes, because the prices are still increasing. I don't see what's hard about this one, people didn't want them to stop the annual price increases because they had some bizarre prejudice against the Gregorian Calendar, they wanted them to stop because the models are already too expensive. Continuing to make them more expensive, just in smaller groups, doesn't address that objection...

4) reduce prices, they've actually given significant reductions in some of the recent box sets, hopefully it continues

They have, and they've been praised for it by even the most cynical of bittervets, so how does this relate to your implication that people are impossible to please?

5) balance the codexes, well this actually seems to be happening with most of the new ones, but it is upsetting existing players as their army of choice no longer works like it used to

And we're back to the core problem with your argument; the community is not a hivemind. Some people can want balance, others can think things are fine. Individual people can want balance in a general sense, and still disagree with the way a particular codex has been changed in pursuit of balance.

It remains to be seen if GW's new direction(which to be frank, is essentially "do the same thing, but faster") will do anything for them, but people need to stop with this "some people said they wanted something and GW did something vaguely approximating it, why are entirely different people still moaning?" nonsense.

 Yodhrin wrote:
You're conflating multiple issues.

Conflating! That's the word. Far less aggressive than my comments about disingenuousness-ness.

 Yodhrin wrote:
Storm of Chaos 2: Storm Harder is about the only thing that would draw me back in.

If they called it that they might draw me in.

 Yodhrin wrote:
... people didn't want them to stop the annual price increases because they had some bizarre prejudice against the Gregorian Calendar...

Fantastic! If I was the kind of person that did this, that would go into my sig!

Exchange rate, huh? I guess the drop in profit has nothing to do with the drop in revenue they created by pissing off half of their customer base. If I were an investor, I would be offended at their estimation of my intelligence. They've cut costs, released more stuff at higher prices and their profit still went down. How will they excuse it away in the end of year report when revenue and profit are down yet again? According to Kirby's preamble in the last report, they had cut costs in order to ensure the long term profitability of the company and their profit was down because of a £4m Web store. I'm aware that we can't say revenue was down for sure based only on profit but I would bet a fair amount of money on that being the case. The white knights will have a hard time explaining this one.

 Azreal13 wrote:

I also agree that I find it baffling that people still seem so loyal to GW in spite of everything, they often appear to be the very "grateful goobers fawning over the latest jewel like releases" or however it was phrased, but if someone is, somehow, happy with their relationship with GW then we can't demand they stop buying, all we can do is try and show them reasons to stop and hope they agree.

So you are, in fact, trying to spread the negative way of thinking?

Is this for a "good" ( heavily debatable... ) cause like trying to force GW to change their ways, or for some other reason entirely?

You continue to confuse "criticism" with "hatred". You should stop doing that.

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
GW is (starting) to do a lot of the things the internet was asking for

1) speeding up releases; well it had been asked for again and again, but now they are actually doing it people are saying it's too fast, they can't keep up/understand all the new rules/meta etc

2) Move things on: The fantasy End Times stuff is making major changes to that world, this is going down pretty well, and hopefully it will stick (finding out it is all a 'dream' and 9th returns to the status quo will be a big disappointment)

3) stop the annual price increases, well they did that and people are now complaining about specific price increases...

4) reduce prices, they've actually given significant reductions in some of the recent box sets, hopefully it continues

5) balance the codexes, well this actually seems to be happening with most of the new ones, but it is upsetting existing players as their army of choice no longer works like it used to

Didn´t you know that the code of conduct for some is to ignore/forget all the good things GW does, dismiss them doing what was asked for completely, and increased sales and good results being just a fluke?

I agree with all of your 5 points, and they are true. However, I guess some people just like complaining/are really so biased they can´t see these things and therefore they will merely dismiss stuff like speeding up codex releases and balancing them, which is what has indeed happened compared to previous editions, factually and undeniably, and they were both asked for.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
You continue to confuse "criticism" with "hatred". You should stop doing that.

Changed. Although, for some, it´s exactly that judging by their posts.

And what proof do you have that shows these things were in fact done for us?

 RunicFIN wrote:
Changed.

No you didn't. Criticism =/= "Negative Way of Thinking".

But nice try. May your armour forever gleam in the morning sun!

 Crimson Devil wrote:
And what proof do you have that shows these things were in fact done for us?

Did you just ask for proof regarding if codices are more balanced than before, and if they were being released faster than before?

Seems to be this "let´s ask proof for obvious things/things you can realize by using common sense." is some cool new game. I won´t play, because it´s ridicilous and childish. If you won´t believe the abovementioned things have happened without some sort of "evidence" then don´t, I don´t mind. I can still state them and they will still be true all the same even if someone refuses to accept that.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 RunicFIN wrote:
Changed.

No you didn't. Criticism =/= "Negative Way of Thinking".

But nice try. May your armour forever gleam in the morning sun!

Subjective, and in this case negative way of thinking is dead on. But whatever. May yours be as dark as the night for all eternity, making even tar appear white.

So even if we accept that all these things have been done by GW and that they are all great, why do you think they haven't returned to growth? They've done their restructuring. They've got their margins as protected as possible.

So what's with the falling profits? Is it just that the word hasn't gotten out about how things are better now? And if GW doesn't really do any advertising or marketing, how will they take advantage of word of mouth advertising when their player base has been reduced over the last decade? Will they have to open more stores to get more new recruits who can then go out and tell people that everyone is wonderful and fine?

Why is revenue, profits and dividends all sort of flat and trending downward if everything is better now?

I'm not disputing the existence, but the reason. You said GW has done these things FOR the customer base. I'm asking you to prove that assertion.

 RunicFIN wrote:

 Crimson Devil wrote:
And what proof do you have that shows these things were in fact done for us?

Did you just ask for proof regarding if codices are more balanced than before, and if they were being released faster than before?

Seems to be this "let´s ask proof for obvious things/things you can realize by using common sense." is some cool new game. I won´t play, because it´s ridicilous and childish. If you won´t believe the abovementioned things have happened without some sort of "evidence" then don´t, I don´t mind. I can still state them and they will still be true all the same even if someone refuses to accept that.

No, he asked for proof that what was being done was for the benefit of the customers and not just games workshop.

 Crimson Devil wrote:
I'm not disputing the existence, but the reason. You said GW has done these things FOR the customer base. I'm asking you to prove that assertion.

Very well, to be honest I was a bit surprised as your message didn´t make this initially clear, as usually you don´t result to the "give us proof that GW starts with a G" -nonsense. Obviously I can´t concretically prove it, but seeing how accurately what they are doing resembles what has been asked for in the past I´d say it´s quite obvious. Alternatively, we can go with the GW is evil and does nothing for anyone -route but I won´t be joining in.

No one can concretically prove they are not doing it for the customer base in the end, either. Inb4 someone goes "burden of proof mew mew mew mew" -yeah, have fun playing your games alone.

I don't believe GW is evil, just deliberately blind. So I don't feel praise is deserved simply because their recent actions have momentarily aligned with my interests.

 Yodhrin wrote:
Some people asked for things to be moved on. Some people are happy with the major changes of the End Times. Plenty of us were happy with the idea of WHF and 40K as settings rather than stories, and End Times has put me off Fantasy completely. If I were religious I'd be praying for another bout of collective amnesia in the design studio, them pulling a Storm of Chaos 2: Storm Harder is about the only thing that would draw me back in.

Exalted. If the net result is that 6 months down the road the WHW (fictional, not to be confused with the shop!) I got into 21 years ago is gone, that's a whole lot of space I'll be freeing up at home. It's not even that I don't like the End Times fluff, it's just not a world I'm interested in playing in.

 Las wrote:
Can economics folks explain this a little more for us laymen? Is it a result of declining profits or does it have to do with the strength of currency?

Strictly speaking the fluctuations in global currencies would not have caused a decrease in profits of the magnitude seen. Share prices across the board for exporters in England would fall if this was the case and by a similar deviation as well. I don't have the data on me at the moment, but I can almost guarantee that this was not the case. Suffice to say, the fall in profits is probably, in part, more due to something within the company than from currency fluctuations. TLDR, share prices says no to the currency argument used by GW.

 RunicFIN wrote:

 Crimson Devil wrote:
I'm not disputing the existence, but the reason. You said GW has done these things FOR the customer base. I'm asking you to prove that assertion.

Very well, to be honest I was a bit surprised as your message didn´t make this initially clear, as usually you don´t result to the "give us proof that GW starts with a G" -nonsense. Obviously I can´t concretically prove it, but seeing how accurately what they are doing resembles what has been asked for in the past I´d say it´s quite obvious. Alternatively, we can go with the GW is evil and does nothing for anyone -route but I won´t be joining in.

No one can concretically prove they are not doing it for the customer base in the end, either. Inb4 someone goes "burden of proof mew mew mew mew" -yeah, have fun playing your games alone.

Out of interest, what point in the past are you refering to? Just given that it took them a decade to produce more daemon engines, am genuinely curious what era might have spawned this.

What I wonder about the financials is how much issues with profitability are related to the quality of Codex releases, and whether or not this is something you can actually observe on eBay and other places on the Internet.

Case in point: after the Ork Codex release, I noticed an uptick of people selling Ork armies. While I realize the models are expendable on the tabletop, what surprised me was the amount people were willing to let them go for. I was able to make deals to buy armies at an average cost per model of between $2 - $3.

Admittedly, my sample size was small, I advertised on Dakka and other forums that I was willing to buy Ork armies and had 11 people get back to me in a 1 week period following the Ork codex release. To come up with fair prices, I looked at armies that were available on eBay, and recent sales were coming in around this range as well. I was able to buy a pretty robust Ork army for about $420 that includes around 180 models, and I did pay for individual NIB models such as Battlewagons and Lootas. But I did get a Ghazghkull Thraka and FW bikers as part of bundles where the cost was around $2 per model, which was nice for me.

I don't want to pretend this anecdote means more than what it does (if anything, it means deals can be had in the secondary market), but it got me thinking about how GW uses supplements and things like Imperial Armor. New model releases are a big part of how GW makes it's money. If there's a relationship between the market demand for new models and the quality of the rules, these other materials could be acting as a way of buttressing defects in the rules to increase demand. I wonder how effective this model is compared to, say, putting more work into the Codex releases themselves and making the rules more effective right from the start.

I did this mental exercise tonight. Would an Eldar player sell you their army at a cost of $2 - $3 per model? If so, does the market support this pricing, could you get a lot of players to sell their armies? A small sample from recent eBay listings of armies with unfinished / unpainted models.

Eldar Army - $200 - 77 models, average price per model: $2.59

Eldar Army - $210 - 48 models, average price per model: $4.38

Eldar Army - $450 - 118 models inc. 4 wave serpents, average price per model: $3.81

The rules for Eldar armies are pretty good, but the prices are only slightly higher than ones I paid for Ork armies. Their Codex is also several years old at this point. When the Codex was released, I was interested in getting an Eldar army and did the same thing. While I can't remember the actual numbers, the average cost per model was over $7 across the board, which is getting too close to the cost to simply buy new models.

What this says to me is that, if there's a relationship between the quality of the rules and the perceived value of models, it comes at the time Codexes are released. You could almost treat this as a measure of the value of any particular army, the average cost for a model on the secondary market compared to the average cost per model new. I will be watching what happens to prices for things like Blood Angels when the new Codex is released, and definitely was watching when Tyranids were released (which was fun...).

The reason the secondary market matters, and why all this relates to GW financials, is that it undermines the prime market for new models. If GW wants to make money, they need to make people want to keep their armies and not sell them on eBay at 15% - 40% of their original price. All other things being equal - if you can release a great Codex like Eldar and drive up demand for armies on the secondary market, then release a flawed Codex like Orks and see demand wane, there's something wrong with the business model.

Which brings me back to supplements. All these supplements and extra rules GW is charging for - is releasing fixes for flawed Codexes really a substitute for putting out great rulebooks in the first place? I know the FW site lists Sicaran Battle Tanks as a hot seller for October on the heels of the IA:13 book. I look at this as a way of driving interest in specific models, but I do wonder if GW is well served by this approach. Isn't the point to get people to buy armies? Are they selling more armies with all the Codexes?

Not sure, but I hope this is something they plan to address.

Personally i think its more to do with shareholders losing confidence in games workshop as a whole (although what you say is part of that). The numbers for the 'core' business remain flat or go down each year. Investors are getting nice dividends so far, but you need to get out before the bubble bursts and everyone knows that.

The relaunch of 40k (their flagship product) kept the numbers flat. A dividend wasn't going to be paid last year (until the investors launched a campaign to ensure it was). People are looking closer at performance and humourous preambles. I'm not sure they'll be able to make sense of the rules (i can't, and i used to play) but they'll be watching customer forums (like this one) to see what the general consensus is on the product.

Techsoldaten... yes on all counts. Benjamin Graham would be proud.

GW has dropped prices on some kits? Which ones?

The only place i can see currency exchange really affecting their business is with FW which sets prices in GBP, thus a stronger pound will directly reduce how much people buy.

Back in, what was it, early 2013 when the pound was comparatively weak, I and many others bought loads of FW: I got most of my Death Korps army, the early Horus Heresy character series were picked up by a fair number, FW superheavies were bought (this is also before, I believe, Apocalypse became slowed with its update) and so on. I think at least half the players in my club of 20+ people had notable FW components, and almost all of them had one or two things.

With the pound much stronger, I've only bought one thing, and more and more people are turning to recasters for their FW fix, as they can't justify paying 30% more than they used to on already high prices.

There has been a decrease in GW product moving locally, but that has nothing to do with currency exchange; the prices on the shelf haven't changed (save for the new kits being more expensive than their older equivalents, which does have an effect), but people aren't buying because the game and business is fundamentally flawed. I don't think there's a single person in my club happy with 40k, and they're spending more time and money on other products; they still love 40k, but it's far too draining to play an increasingly flawed game week to week, and even moreso to spend money on something which is increasingly not to one's liking.

No one's selling, nor has any indications of might sell, save for momentary outbursts of frustration, but there is very little investment in the game anymore, and absolutely no one is starting a new army.

Everytime I think of something I might want to do, I remind myself how little fun I've been having with the game, and how the future of it looks so bleak. Sure, I'd love to do a Heroes of Armaggeddon themed army, or use aftermarket models to expand my Praetorian army, or build a Valhallan one, or maybe do a Fallen Angels army, but why? I love the setting, the models, both GW and not are quite good and enjoyable to paint, but when the core product, the main reason I do any of this has become depressing to think about and unenjoyable to play without ridiculous amounts of house-ruling, why on earth would I go drop a few hundred more dollars?

I'm not alone on that, and while GW may continue to keep its head in the sand, and its own inertia and mass will keep it going for sometime (not unlike how they themselves describe the Imperium of Man), I can't help but notice decreasing enthusiasm in the community, lower and lower regular turnouts for events and game nights, and not a single new player in months.

 MajorStoffer wrote:
The only place i can see currency exchange really affecting their business is with FW which sets prices in GBP, thus a stronger pound will directly reduce how much people buy.

There has been a decrease in GW product moving locally, but that has nothing to do with currency exchange; the prices on the shelf haven't changed (save for the new kits being more expensive than their older equivalents, which does have an effect),

When producing Group accounts a change in exchange rate will affect the value of what GW can recognise in the accounts from it's non-UK operations. Just because you don't see a sticker price change doesn't mean anything.

Regarding whether exchange rates can sufficiently explain a £1m profit loss, here's a quick-and-dirty example, let's assume that H1 and H2 have the same revenue split on £110m annual revenue, and that 50% of GW revenue is generated overseas.

That makes H1 revenue from overseas £27.5m. If we take a 0.1 movement in the exchange rate (I used 1.7 and 1.6), that reduces to £25.9m which is a £1.6m movement in profit (and that's bearing in mind that I think I've chosen numbers that are unfavourable from GW's PoV to the real world numbers).

Don't get me wrong, I'm anti-GW's current management and direction, but I don't think the reason provided can be dismissed until we see the accounts. Even if it's true, I still don't think they're in a good place.

 Baragash wrote:
Regarding whether exchange rates can sufficiently explain a £1m profit loss, here's a quick-and-dirty example, let's assume that H1 and H2 have the same revenue split on £110m annual revenue, and that 50% of GW revenue is generated overseas.

That makes H1 revenue from overseas £27.5m. If we take a 0.1 movement in the exchange rate (I used 1.7 and 1.6), that reduces to £25.9m which is a £1.6m movement in profit (and that's bearing in mind that I think I've chosen numbers that are unfavourable from GW's PoV to the real world numbers).

Are we comparing the first half of this calendar year with the 2nd half? Because the average exchange rate over those two periods hasn't actually changed all that much, if it has changed, it's changed in GW's favour from about ~1.66 to ~1.62.

It's only if you compare to the 2nd half of last calendar year that it's unfavourable, and there it's about a change of ~1.57 to ~1.62.

The lower the number, the more GW make per US sale if I'm not mistaken because it takes more sales in USD to come to the same revenue in GBP (it is very late and it's been a long day so maybe I'm delusional ).


(note: my numbers could be wrong, I just windowed the relevant 6 months and drew a line that looked close to the average, lol)

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
]Are we comparing the first half of this calendar year with the 2nd half?

I believe we are comparing the respective first halves of GW's previous and current financial year.

1) 1. June 2013 - 30. November 2013
2) 1. June 2014 - 30. November 2014

At least that is what GW's statement refers to.

 RunicFIN wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:

I also agree that I find it baffling that people still seem so loyal to GW in spite of everything, they often appear to be the very "grateful goobers fawning over the latest jewel like releases" or however it was phrased, but if someone is, somehow, happy with their relationship with GW then we can't demand they stop buying, all we can do is try and show them reasons to stop and hope they agree.

So you are, in fact, trying to spread the negative way of thinking?

Is this for a "good" ( heavily debatable... ) cause like trying to force GW to change their ways, or for some other reason entirely?

People aren't accountable to you for the reasons they make posts. Your query is irrelevant and off topic.

 techsoldaten wrote:
What I wonder about the financials is how much issues with profitability are related to the quality of Codex releases, and whether or not this is something you can actually observe on eBay and other places on the Internet.

How do you measure the quality of a codex?

I think part of why you see an uptick in armies for sale when that army's codex is updated is because the sellers expect there to be a spike in interest around that time. You get more people selling which must mean more people are buying.

With every codex release there are those who get excited by new opportunities and models and there are those who are upset that a specific build, unit, or playstyle has been eliminated. Does that make quality relative? Just look at the 100+ pages of the BA rumor thread. We've people excited about the update and people swearing at GW that their army has been ruined. That's par for the course. Usually the community comes to some sort of consensus about how powerful a codex is relative to others, but I'm not sure that quality equals power.

You're absolutely correct; power does not equal quality.

There are ways you could measure a codex's quality as objectively as possible. I'd probably go with internal balance, external balance, and rules quality, which covers the crunch aspects. Then you could compare from earlier codices and other ones things like quantity of new art and fluff, though quality would be too personal for people. Finally, you could try and quantify options and customization, which sort of ties into the crunch aspects, as options and customization or builds only shows when those options are all valid through balance.

Personally, all the new codices have only really improved external balance among the updated books. Internal is still pretty poor, and the quality of the rules writing is still lacking. All of the new codices have had art and fluff cut, or at least nothing new or worth mentioning, and number of valid/balanced builds is still rather low. Options are being cut in many places and only really replaced by expensive supplements and other DLC.

I can't help but look at my 5th IG book (even with all its flaws) and like it better than my 6th book in most ways.

Not to mention that the new codices are twice the price of their 5th ed counterparts.

I'm staggered that GW charge what they do for rules. They claim to be a model company, but they put a massive ~£80 barrier to entry to use those models in the form of rulebook + & 1 codex. Practically every other model company that makes rules has rules are near or actual zero cost. And it's not like the quality of the rules is a factor, in many cases they're superior !

GW's profits can go up and down, these are difficult economic times. Profits going down doesn't mean there will be a sudden crash. It's loss of customers that will lead to a crash because once enough stop buying/playing, there won't be that saturation of the market. GW's customer base is only inferred from their sales. They could have the same number of customers who are all spending less. That would be easier to bounce back from than losing large numbers of customers.

So much of GW's ongoing success stands on the fact that you can always get a game of GW at any shop or club. Many people won't consider buying into another system because of concerns about getting a game. When GW's customer base depletes to a certain level, it will drop off quite fast.

GW do very little to nurture their customer base. Even Wizards of the Coast, owned by corporate giant Hasbro, interact with the community through social media. They do articles and explain design decisions and answer questions, they support tournaments and events at stores everywhere. GW don't do any of that and through their one-man stores make it difficult to build any community at all. The only reward for shopping with GW is being able to get figures they restrict to being direct only. It seems their moat and walls are keeping customers out and letting competition in.