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return on the right tracks , the competitors (Corvus belli , Privatter ecc) will have trouble?

Will the GW-factor smash the competition , or still we will have room for non-GW games?

An important factor , here in italy , will be the fact of GW continuing doing the translations.

saluti

GW will never be the monopoly it once was again, doubt it could be part of an oligopoly either or for long. All it's improvement would do at this point is let it live longer and be a bit better off in this newish competitive environment.

 n0t_u wrote:
GW will never be the monopoly it once was again, doubt it could be part of an oligopoly either or for long. All it's improvement would do at this point is let it live longer and be a bit better off in this newish competitive environment.

I totally agree. I think GW simply left it too late to claw back the market share it's lost over the last few years.

I don't necessarily see that as a negative though. The market has grown and developed, we have more choice now than ever before and it's nice to see the hobby revitalised.

And I think it's actually a good thing for GW too. Their complacency and refusal to admit they weren't the only player in the market is probably the reson their sales were falling. Compettion is actually a good thing for businesses - I don't think the turnaround and change in approach we've seen from GW lately would have happened unless they had lost market share to other companies.

I don't think they will ver regain the market share they had, and they will never see themselves as the only big player, but I don't think that will do them any harm and I hope their profits increase because they have been trying hard of late to bring back customers.

They sat on their laurels for a decade while Rome burnt around them, people have been exposed to tight balanced rules and reasonable prices now they won't accept GW's crap just because of some mediocre bundles.

Until prices drop and rules massively improved things won't change.

Can't turn back the clock.

Besides, they're too expensive now to compete with everyone else. They're rapidly pricing themselves out of their own market, and as long as they continue to charge more for roughly the same product going forward with each release, they'll never claw back what they had.

I think the competition has more to gain from a strong GW than a weak GW.

The reality of it is that GW has far too much overhead to price themselves reasonably anymore.

They'd have to do massive layoffs and switch up their business model to make it work.

 StygianBeach wrote:
I think the competition has more to gain from a strong GW than a weak GW.

Indeed. A lot of companies/independant sculptors actually make models so that they can be used for GW games. So, if GW is strong, they will also be strong since that means more sales for GW proxies.

Look at Victoria Miniatures. Their SF guard is clearly made and inspired mainly for/from a well known game in the future where there is only war. It can of course be used for other games/purposes, but well...seeing the conversion kits for some vehicles, it's not innocent.

Sure, some old games that were left alone suddenly coming back to the scene (looking at you, Blood Bowl!) will sometimes need a few adjustments (for example, the companies making gaming mats for Blood Bowl). But a strong presence of GW games actually help a lot the other companies out there. Some do indeed their own game, but there is a reason the scale is usually very similar or some designs are very close....editors know very well that complementarity means touching more people. Making something way too particular or special has a big risk, and I can't remember all the awesome ideas some companies edited only to disappear in the cold reality of markets when they finally go bankrupt...because they didn't touch enough people for their games to be profitable enough to make a living out of it, and their miniatures were way too specific/out of scale to be used in other existing games. #Sadness.

Shub-Nullgurath wrote:
The reality of it is that GW has far too much overhead to price themselves reasonably anymore..

Then you clearly didn't see the changes until now. There is an awareness about that from GW, it's pretty clear some boxes/games are not so expensive than a year ago.

And when you see the competitors...you realize the prices aren't really that cheaper. Especially when the quality is here.

I mean, even Mantic is forced to raise their own quality so that people keep buying from them. Even them achieve prices that aren't so far from GW's. I won't even talk about the many skirmish games out there, with prices that would make an army of 40k size completely scandalous. Look at Victoria Miniatures prices for a squad. It is a really wonderful and awesome looking squad, with lots of variations. But it has a price as well...and it's not really that cheap at all, especially when you want to make an Imperial Guard erm I mean Astra Militarum army equivalent...

Yeah, It's unlikely they'll ever be the Blizzard of MMO videogames again. Still can be the Nintendo powerhouse, though.

They already did massive layoffs with one man stores the only way to cut more is to close shops which they can't do because they signed stupidly long leases ten years in some cases.

They've frozen wages as well don't forget despite the fact they are still in the black.

If they want to grow they must drop prices it won't be pretty it'll actually be horrific for a few years but by going back to selling by volume instead of by unit they could grow again.

Of course share holders wouldn't be happy but continuing on the present course just let's the company fade away to nothing.

hobojebus wrote:
They sat on their laurels for a decade while Rome burnt around them, people have been exposed to tight balanced rules and reasonable prices now they won't accept GW's crap just because of some mediocre bundles.

Until prices drop and rules massively improved things won't change.

Exactly this. Every time I go to the GW store play a game or watch people play and then later watch or play a different game I realize how far off the mark GW rules are compared to what they could be if they wrote balance rules. It's like night and day and then I find myself questioning how anyone can actually like the way GW games play , especially those people who say that they tried other games and prefer GW games instead

GW still have a long way to go to attract those who left for other systems.

It's making some positive steps in the right direction, but mostly the rules are still rubbish. For 40K at least they have a lot riding on 8th ed.

As for the other companies you mention - Privateer had their chance a few years back but missed. Corvus Belli are niche and at the moment seem quite happy with it.
What's more interesting is X-Wing, which appears to be going from strength to strength and is hoovering up the shop/club pick up play crowd that GW abandoned.

Bartali wrote:

What's more interesting is X-Wing, which appears to be going from strength to strength and is hoovering up the shop/club pick up play crowd that GW abandoned.

It is interesting, but it is not restricted to the table top, Disney's Star Wars is taking over everything.

The thing is I've never seen any other gaming company not want anything other than a healthy GW, particularly (the many) run by ex-GW people.

Gamers are by their nature quite polygamous and will flit from one thing to another so a monster like GW generating the number of gamers it does serves others well.

GW rightly try to hang on to their customers as much as possible but there is recognition that gamers will grow to other things. They failed in this respect by having only 40K and Fantasy/AoS with little beyond FW for customers to grow into.

What will concern other retailers is GWs attempts to regain this lost ground. I would think this will affect most but not unduly hinder is they have suitable USPs, some that have been more about cloning old ideas might have more of a battle.

Also final point: The idea that there is some Golden Age going on is tosh in the respect that there have always been alternatives to GW games and models, even when the Specialist Games range were core. There has always been room for alternatives and there always will be, the only difference is that Publishing and Tech has become common and affordable; meaning that the big fish don't necessarily have sole access high end kit. What would have been a Word Processed/Photocopied ruleset in 1986 can now be produced in colour hard copy with glossy photo's. Things are different but still the same.

 Sarouan wrote:


I mean, even Mantic is forced to raise their own quality so that people keep buying from them. Even them achieve prices that aren't so far from GW's.

Mantic

10x Enforcers (hard-plastic) 20$

5x Enforcer Peacekeepers (hard-plastic) 20$

GW

10x Rubric Marines (hard-plastic) 50$

5x Scarab Occult Terminators (hard-plastic) 60$


Thats a bit more then "aren't so far from"

 ulgurstasta wrote:

 Sarouan wrote:


I mean, even Mantic is forced to raise their own quality so that people keep buying from them. Even them achieve prices that aren't so far from GW's.

Mantic

10x Enforcers (hard-plastic) 20$

5x Enforcer Peacekeepers (hard-plastic) 20$

GW

10x Rubric Marines (hard-plastic) 50$

5x Scarab Occult Terminators (hard-plastic) 60$


Thats a bit more then "aren't so far from"

Aye. But Mantic's mini quality isn't exactly known to be sterling. Get what you pay for as they say.

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:

 ulgurstasta wrote:

 Sarouan wrote:


I mean, even Mantic is forced to raise their own quality so that people keep buying from them. Even them achieve prices that aren't so far from GW's.

Mantic

10x Enforcers (hard-plastic) 20$

5x Enforcer Peacekeepers (hard-plastic) 20$

GW

10x Rubric Marines (hard-plastic) 50$

5x Scarab Occult Terminators (hard-plastic) 60$


Thats a bit more then "aren't so far from"

Aye. But Mantic's mini quality isn't exactly known to be sterling. Get what you pay for as they say.

Except in this case this is (almost) a fair comparison. A better example would be Enforcers $20 / tactical squad $35 (last I knew) and peacekeepers $20 / Terminators $50. Mantic's hard plastic enforcer kits are almost perfect analogues to the equivalent vanilla marine kit in terms of contents and quality.

The community would be lesser, to a degree, without GW.

While they have just started to turn over a new leaf and win people back. Their more recent past actions burned a lot of people and lost them a lot of trust.

They may not be the GW they once were, but they can be something new and better.

GW deserves respect for the fact they have managed to last as long as they have when others have folded. But they have a long way to go to convince people they are worth it again.

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:

Aye. But Mantic's mini quality isn't exactly known to be sterling. Get what you pay for as they say.

Yes, that's exactly my point. You want quality? You pay for it.

Mantic models are really not known for their quality. All their kits, even in hard plastics, are far from being stellar, not even talking about the details.

The metal models can be nice sometimes, but of course the price quickly rises and the comparison doesn't exactly work the same.


Like it or not, GW games are still popular. And it's normal some other companies still try to sell GW-like miniatures.

What is good is that we have even more choice nowadays. And I think it's going even richer with a strong GW rather than a weak one. Mostly because GW shops are a GREAT entry point for a lot of people who know nothing about miniatures. That's their strong point, and that helps the Hobby in general in that way.

If they could afford to slash the price of everything by half for a year or two and sort out their rules a bit they'd blow everyone including independent retailers out of the water and be back on top for good.
I'd imagine that it would be viable even if it meant that the share holders had a little blip in their investments.

 notprop wrote:
Also final point: The idea that there is some Golden Age going on is tosh in the respect that there have always been alternatives to GW games and models, even when the Specialist Games range were core. There has always been room for alternatives and there always will be, the only difference is that Publishing and Tech has become common and affordable; meaning that the big fish don't necessarily have sole access high end kit. What would have been a Word Processed/Photocopied ruleset in 1986 can now be produced in colour hard copy with glossy photo's. Things are different but still the same.

Yes, but how many of those games from the mid nineties and early 00's died. Plenty of people bought into the likes Confrontation or AT-43, but they still died for various reasons. The games that were alive then and are alive now tend to be the games that were around before GW, like certain RPGs and historicals.

The market now? Saturated with games that not only aren't dying, but thriving. You don't have one or two alternatives. There's nearly a dozen alternate games on the shelf at my FLGS (and they have a pretty limited stock), with their own full fledged range of miniatures, releasing steady content run by companies that are growing, not shrinking. Some now have been around for nearly 10 years. Games covering sci fi, fantasy, steampunk, cyberpunk, and more genres. The one niche no one else has yet broken into is mass scale 28mm, but that's likely because no one wants to.

Compared to the 90's? We're absolutely in a golden age of tabletop gaming. There's not just choice - as you said, there was choice before. Now there's so much choice that you can pick a game that appeals to you, not just because it's there, and there's a good chance that game isn't going to die a year after you get into it.

 Sarouan wrote:
Then you clearly didn't see the changes until now. There is an awareness about that from GW, it's pretty clear some boxes/games are not so expensive than a year ago.

And when you see the competitors...you realize the prices aren't really that cheaper. Especially when the quality is here.

I mean, even Mantic is forced to raise their own quality so that people keep buying from them. Even them achieve prices that aren't so far from GW's. I won't even talk about the many skirmish games out there, with prices that would make an army of 40k size completely scandalous. Look at Victoria Miniatures prices for a squad. It is a really wonderful and awesome looking squad, with lots of variations. But it has a price as well...and it's not really that cheap at all, especially when you want to make an Imperial Guard erm I mean Astra Militarum army equivalent...

The idea that Mantic makes low quality miniatures is a really bad meme:

Mantic Zombies - 40 miniatures for £29.99

GW Zombies - 20 miniatures for £20.50

You're getting Mantic's much more detailed miniatures for £5~ less.

Sure, there are some ranges that are a bit gonky (elves and Basileans come to mind) but the same can be said of a lot of GW's fantasy stuff.

 Sarouan wrote:

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:

Aye. But Mantic's mini quality isn't exactly known to be sterling. Get what you pay for as they say.

Yes, that's exactly my point. You want quality? You pay for it.

Mantic models are really not known for their quality. All their kits, even in hard plastics, are far from being stellar, not even talking about the details.

The metal models can be nice sometimes, but of course the price quickly rises and the comparison doesn't exactly work the same.


Like it or not, GW games are still popular. And it's normal some other companies still try to sell GW-like miniatures.

What is good is that we have even more choice nowadays. And I think it's going even richer with a strong GW rather than a weak one. Mostly because GW shops are a GREAT entry point for a lot of people who know nothing about miniatures. That's their strong point, and that helps the Hobby in general in that way.

Actually, the specific example chosen is not a far stretch - I actually like the Enforcers and Peacekeepers better than the Space Marines and Terminators. (For stylistic reasons - which is a more elusive 'quality' than I might like to pretend.)

Ditto for the Mantic Undead for Kings of War - but GW's Empire and Brettonians beat the snot out of Mantic's Basilleans. (Though I will take the Mantic Elohi over GW's winged Sigmarines.)

So, it can depend on what qualities you are looking for. (Except for the Mantic Men at Arms - which are just plain bad. )

I also kind of disagree about the GW stores - they are an anchor being thrown to a drowning man.

They could be great for the hobby - but not as they are currently being implemented. (If they went back to being more generalized gaming stores, they might actually profit from the success of their competitors.)

The Auld Grump *EDIT* There has already been talk of the local Warhammer store selling off its lease. Given that the shopping center concerned already has vacant shops, I do not expect it to happen. Fortunately, they only took a three year lease.

Shub-Nullgurath wrote:


The idea that Mantic makes low quality miniatures is a really bad meme:

Sure, there are some ranges that are a bit gonky (elves and Basileans come to mind) but the same can be said of a lot of GW's fantasy stuff.

Mantic makes the best plastic Zombies... isn't the Meme Mantic make low quality stuff except the zombies?

The Mantic zombies were 1 of the first kits they released, and they have not been able to top them since. The GW zombies on the other hand... are from 1998?

Plus the Mantic stuff gets repetitive really quickly, I try to buy it by the sprue and not the box.

 StygianBeach wrote:
Mantic makes the best plastic Zombies... isn't the Meme Mantic make low quality stuff except the zombies?

The Mantic zombies were 1 of the first kits they released, and they have not been able to top them since. The GW zombies on the other hand... are from 1998?

Plus the Mantic stuff gets repetitive really quickly, I try to buy it by the sprue and not the box.

Mantic's scifi stuff is consistently pretty excellent. Fantasy is very hit and miss.

But up until like a year ago, GW was the same. I mean, look at tyranid biovores.

Shub-Nullgurath wrote:


Mantic's scifi stuff is consistently pretty excellent. Fantasy is very hit and miss.

There is a reason for that. Former Mantic fantasy was pretty generic and cartoon. The zombies are pretty much different because the comparison indeed hurts with GW's current ones, mainly because GW never redid them since quite a lot of time now. With one exception: the corpse chariot. If you compare the zombies on that kit with the current ones, it's not the same...

Of course, if we talk about mantic plastic dwarves or, the worst of all, mantic elves...yeah, even the old GW high elf spearmen don't look that bad in comparison.

The same goes with the other undead...Skeletons and ghouls: just compare with current GW's line, it's not really the same result. Even the knights are quite a rift in quality comparison.

Mantic Sci-Fi line is more recent, and it shows in quality. The forge fathers, the enforcers, the vermins...they're nice, even if sometimes they look cartoonish. Still, quality of their plastic is different. I can tell by working both GW and Mantic - it's not the same feeling.

There is also a difference in quality with plastic. And it also has a price.

Of course, we can also talk about Privateer Press miniatures, but then it's not funny to shoot the ambulance. They made a lot of progress since the beginning (their first "plastic" was awful to work, it was just barely passable for their big kits like warjacks or monsters), but their material's quality is...well...it's not to GW's standards, no matter how you look at it. On the other hand, the price on their boxes is to GW's standards - even way above, to the point some people buy GW boxes to fill infantry/cavalry proxies in their Horde games. Especially cavalry, in fact. Their price is just scandalous, but it's strange we don't see that many people to complain about.

There are also a lot of "fine detailed miniatures" you can find on the net, mostly in resin but also in metal or in plastic. And their prices aren't always that far from GW's. It's particularly showing in skirmish games, since you need less models to play, they can "justify" hero blisters-like prices for each of their model, even if they're grunts.

So, it's not the easy picture "GW is charging us way too much!". A lot of companies does the same. The truth is; when you want to put quality in your work, it HAS a price. The material, the details, the quantity...a lot of things have to be taken into account.

And GW is clearly doing some efforts since the change at their head.

 ProtoClone wrote:
The community would be lesser, to a degree, without GW.

While they have just started to turn over a new leaf and win people back. Their more recent past actions burned a lot of people and lost them a lot of trust.

They may not be the GW they once were, but they can be something new and better.

GW deserves respect for the fact they have managed to last as long as they have when others have folded. But they have a long way to go to convince people they are worth it again.

Well said.

 ulgurstasta wrote:

 Sarouan wrote:


I mean, even Mantic is forced to raise their own quality so that people keep buying from them. Even them achieve prices that aren't so far from GW's.

Mantic

10x Enforcers (hard-plastic) 20$

5x Enforcer Peacekeepers (hard-plastic) 20$

GW

10x Rubric Marines (hard-plastic) 50$

5x Scarab Occult Terminators (hard-plastic) 60$


Thats a bit more then "aren't so far from"

Mantic's stuff kind of sucks as far as plastic kits go.

A better comparison would be something like Dreamforge or Warlord, both of whom sell 2 to 3 times the model per box at GW's pricepoint, and have just as many options/upgrades.

With the prices GW ask we don't have to worry, the improvement i 3D printing and manufacturing processes (and kickstarter) means that niche games and faction can be produced more easily these days.

They could return to when their models weren't a day's pay for a model - but it still wouldn't bring me back to their fold.

The prices were the reason I stopped buying their stuff at retail.
The rules were the reason I stopped playing the games.

I found game rules and models I prefer more, now. Even if they got Jes Goodwin to design ALL of the new stuff, it's too late.